


On The Other Hand

by futureboy (PokeRowan)



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: ASL, Ableism, BSL, Deaf Character, Deaf Club, Deaf Culture, F/F, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, audism, background lindsay/meg, battle buddies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-05-08 06:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14688477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeRowan/pseuds/futureboy
Summary: An accident on the job means Agent Ryan Haywood is recovering from more than just broken bones. After joining Austin ASL Gamers, hoping to improve his communication in a world he can’t hear, he begins to wonder just how much of him needs to be 'fixed' at all.[Jeremwood Deaf Club AU. B-Plot Mavin.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [RPF disclaimer: Written according to guidelines set by RT employees (to the best of my knowledge). This is a fictional series of events using characters inspired by real people.]
> 
> A post on my standing as the author of this fanfic can be found [here](https://futureboy-ao3.tumblr.com/post/173992945299/a-few-words-regarding-on-the-other-hand).

The office is cold, because it’s August in Texas and the A/C is absolutely cranked. The breeze leaves little shivery waves of raised hairs on Ryan’s forearms. He briefly wonders if it’s making a whistling noise, like the one in the trainees’ quarters when he goes in to tell them when simulation coaching is scheduled for.

Unfortunately, it’s a difficult thing to find out. Sure, he can safely _assume_ it’s making noise, but he doesn’t know for sure. It’d be a bit weird to ask, too. Of all the hearing-related things he could question in an audiologist’s office… Well. The air conditioning would be a waste of time.

**_Other than the obvious, how are you finding things so far?_ **

**Hard,** Ryan writes back. **I can’t understand people.**

**_But the ASL classes are going well?_ **

His doctor slides the notebook they’re sharing back over the desk, and Ryan stares at the words until they blur at the edges. He’s picked up the basics, he guesses, but it’s unclear whether that’s _helping_ or not.

 **I’m learning,** he settles on.

Ryan’s discovered his brain is pretty good at sorting fragments and words into full sentences. _Hi. My name is Ryan. My age is thirty-seven. Today, it is raining. Yesterday, it was sunny._

A month on from the incident in Beirut, and he’s managed to grasp a few conversation topics: the weather; numbers; question words; family and description. Colours were fun to learn, but he always ending up confusing the signs for ‘red’ and ‘pink’. There had been plenty of time to spend in the classes ever since his handler had written him off on paid sick leave, which was kind of a fancy way of saying ‘we’re going to need you again later’. He can’t complain too much; the agency is looking after him pretty well.

**_Any problems in the hands?_ **

**Just my knee, now. Feels better already.**

The doctor makes a satisfied face, and starts writing again. **_You’ll be off the crutches in around a month - we’ll look at how you’re doing at your next appointment._ **

Ryan nods. The brace is _fucking_ uncomfortable, so that’s a relief.

**_There’s one more suggestion I have._ **

Well, he’s already in physical therapy, has a trauma therapist online, he’s taking ASL classes, he’s having a future course of action developed for his shot-to-shit hearing, and could conceivably be back at work - albeit on desk duty or in R&D - within another six months… What else _should_ he be doing?

Bringing up a webpage displaying an itinerary, the doctor tilts the screen towards him.

**_I want you to try and attend a regular event at the Deaf Club._ **

 

* * *

 

“He says it’ll help me learn sign better,” he whines. It’s weird, being able to talk but not knowing if it’s coming out right. There are vibrations in his throat, and clicks on the back of his tongue, but there’s no volume or tone or _sound_.

Malone shoots him a look that clearly says, _you’re an idiot_. “Go,” she says, in what is most likely an annoyed way. “You’ll enjoy it.”

“I might not,” he protests, squinting at her mouth to make out the words. “I might hate it. I don’t know any video game words.”

“They’ll teach you. Pass that file?”

Ryan leans over from his reception chair and grabs the manila folder. He got lucky - a fractured patella and some scattered stitches. Malone’s leg is still fucked up, and her ribs are still pretty swollen. She’s determined to get some work done from her goddamn hospital bed; there’s something admirably stubborn in it.

“What if they don’t like me? I used to be able to hear. I’ll be able to hear again, at some point. They might hate me--”

Malone shakes her head. She doesn’t bother to look up from the front cover she’s dragging a biro over. “They won’t. Lots of p... b... deaf.”

“Hmm?”

She tilts her face towards him. “Lots of people become deaf.”

“True,” he says. “What if they’re all old?”

“Playing video games? That’s badass.”

That was true again. Damnit. “What if they ask about work?”

Malone looks _very_ exasperated at this, but her mouth moves too quickly for Ryan to pick anything up. Even when he asks her to repeat, slowly, it’s too much, so she grabs his hand and presses his fingers to her neck.

“Don’t tell them,” she says, and he can feel the rumble of her voice. It helps more than he thought it would. “It’s like normal. Yeah? Just say you had an accident on the job.”

“...Yeah.”

Agent Malone shoots him a reassuring smile, and he takes back his hand. “Tell me about it,” she says, and keeps flicking through the folder whilst she listens. Ryan wishes he had that luxury.

“They’re called Austin ASL Gamers. They rent out the Deaf Club for an evening a week and play video games. That’s about all I know. Not sure how many people go, not sure what they play, not sure what kind of people they are.”

“Deaf, I assume.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Malone’s shoulders shake. She puts a finger to her lips - too loud, Haywood.

“Sorry.”

She makes an ‘OK’ sign with the hand that’s not scribbling notes on paperwork. “Tell me about it? When you go?”

“Of course.”

Ryan’s been reassured that there’s one member of the club who’s worked with traumatic hearing loss before. That he’s great at helping people pick up sign, and a really friendly guy, and that playing video games with a group of people is a wonderful atmosphere to pick up sign, socially.

Malone wiggles her fingers in his field of vision. “Name?” she’s saying. “What’s his name? Your sign man?”

“Jeremy,” he says, and tries to spell it out on his hand... _D-O-O-L-E-Y._ He _always_ signs ‘U’ instead of ‘R’, which is an obvious pain in the ass. Fucking ‘Uyan’. Jesus Christ. He’s gonna embarrass himself horribly in front of a bunch of experts.

Ryan lost his hearing in a _military accident_ , for god’s sake. And yet, somehow, the prospect of ‘Austin ASL Gamers’ is ten times fucking scarier.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uploaded early as a gift to [Waffle-o (XylB)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/XylB/pseuds/Waffle-o). Cheers for letting me watch Achievement Haunters, pal! ♥

There’s a lot of shitty things about Ryan’s morning routine, and today is no exception. Turns out alarms and hearing loss still aren’t mixing so well, and, well, who’d’ve guessed, huh? Thing is, he slides out of bed an hour later than he wanted to. In his sleep-hazy urgency, he slips whilst reaching for his crutches, and a painful twinge shoots up his entire right leg.

“Ow,” he says, feeling the croakiness of a crappy morning grating up his throat.

Maybe he should get an Uber later.

So he pulls himself up from the floor, struggles through showering, _doesn’t_ struggle through breakfast, and then has to pull up a chair so that he can load the dishwasher. Not being able to spread his weight equally makes the simplest of tasks harder. Combine that with vertigo, general dizziness, and screwed up internal balance whajamacallits, and that makes for an unsteady and grouchy Ryan.

He just manages to collapse onto the couch, when he spots the mailman waving frantically at the window. For fuck’s sake.

“Sorry, sorry,” he mutters, hastily squeezing around the door so that he doesn’t take out his own crutches. “I can’t hear anything right now.”

A single toned, high-pitched whine starts up in his brain. He relieves the mailman of the stack of mail he’s suddenly received - more work letters and forms, he’ll deal with that when he’s in a better mood - and hobbles back into the living room.

Then he takes out his cell phone.

 **DOORBELL** , he writes, in all caps, on the notepad app.

 

* * *

 

The Deaf Club is smaller than Ryan had expected it to be.

When the Uber he’d called that evening had started driving up a shaky gravel track, he’d been sure he’d been in the wrong place, but here it was - a community hall style building, in brick and grey plaster, with a dark, sloping roof. _It’s gotta be less than two thousand square feet_ , his brain unhelpfully supplies, and Ryan has to remind himself that this isn’t an op.

It’s just a building.

Pulling himself over to the front entrance - god, the Uber driver was _already_ taking off, couldn’t he have brought Ryan any closer to the doors? - he notes other features around the back of the place. A cute little patio space, up on raised decking. A wide expanse of grass which, on closer inspection, had two worn patches of dirt at opposing ends. Huh. That would be soccer.

He stumbles _just_ as he’s reaching the end of the gravel parking lot, a crutch getting wedged awkwardly on the uneven surface, and he almost completely falls - one arm, still stuck in the crutch that stayed upright, sends a painful twinge into his shoulder. Ryan half-kneels, half-crouches as he catches his breath. Fucking _ouch_.

Then shoes appear in his line of sight, and there’s warm hands tapping on his shoulder, _one, two, three!_ , and then they help to hoist him into a standing position.

“Thank you,” he winces, and then remembers that this man might not be able to hear him. He awkwardly signs it with one flailing hand.

“Welcome,” signs the man, smiling despite his concern, and gestures towards the entrance. Ryan manages to make his way inside without any further problems; the man keeps a hand hovering behind his elbow, just in case.

He finds himself in a large hall, with a raised stage, a bar area with seating, and a TV mounted on the wall by the bar. Over in another section - the main room is all open plan - there is a small group of people crowded around a TV stood on a portable unit. It reminds Ryan of science class VHS screenings in high school, but this one’s a flat screen with several games consoles sitting on the shelves underneath the top surface.

The man guides him into a reception chair, and he sighs with relief. Ow, ow, _ow_.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” Ryan signs, free from the crutches now. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome,” is the repeated reply. “My name is J-E-R-E-M-Y.”

Jeremy signs slowly, which soothes Ryan’s frazzled nerves instantly. He stops squinting at the man’s hands for two seconds and takes in his face: bearded, with a shaved head and kind eyes. The broadest shoulders Ryan’s ever seen on a human being of Jeremy’s height. Strong arms and a patient air about him - whether that’s a front or not, Ryan imagines he’ll find out at some point.

“Name-- U-Y-A-N,” he tries, and then scowls fiercely at his spelling hand for betraying him. “ _R_ -Y-A-N. H-A-Y-W-O-O-D.”

Jeremy pulls a chair over to sit opposite him, so they can talk face-to-face, and chuckles to himself. “Name sign,” he says, and then forms the letter ‘J’ on his bicep. Then he separates them. “J. M-U-S-C-L-E. _J-E-R-E-M-Y_ ,” he says, and Ryan suddenly understands what Jeremy’s doing. He’s trying to make it easier on him, so he doesn’t have to struggle through more fingerspelling than he already has to. Now all he has to do, if he wants to talk about Jeremy, is use a single motion against his arm.

He smiles, in spite of the pain he’s still in.

Jeremy grins back. Evidently, he’s counting it as a win.

Someone from the big group crowded around the TV strides over to them, rapidly signing at Jeremy in wide, animated movements - glasses, curly hair, and strongly built, Ryan observes. Jeremy signs back just as quickly, and then slows all the way down when he turns to catch Ryan’s eye.

“ _He_ ,” is the start, pointing, but the man interrupts him with more rapid-fire hand movements. Jeremy closes his hand by his mouth a whole bunch of times, and Ryan doesn’t need to have an ASL lesson to know that a sign like that meant _shut the fuck up_. “This is M-I-C-H-A-E-L,” he spells out. Ryan nods. Repeats it with unskilled motions of his own.

Michael wiggles three fingers against an outstretched hand - his name sign.

“Spell it?” he asks Jeremy, and Michael outright laughs. He wishes he could hear that.

Apparently, it’s his initial, combined with the sign for ‘loudmouth’ - the three digits of the ‘M’ fluttering between a cupped index finger and thumb. To Jeremy’s credit, he _almost_ manages to suppress the amused smile that rises up, but when Ryan laughs at the name sign too, the facade falls.

“Come over, come over,” Michael says casually. Despite Jeremy’s quick adoption of concerned glances, Ryan manages to pull himself up to his feet and get moving again.

The group by the television are playing Trivial Pursuit. Michael quickfires off their sign names, and Ryan does his best to repeat, taking a mental note of them: a ‘G’ against the nose for the flailing, lanky, bearded man with a sun tan. A dark-haired, short woman who’s name is an ‘S’ against her forehead. One guy with a blue streak through his hair looks up from a laptop and awkwardly waves to Ryan - he’s introduced as an ‘M’ on the chest, followed by the sign for ‘build’, according to Jeremy. And finally, Michael throws himself down on the couch next to a woman with fiery red and orange locks, who is apparently ‘cat-L’. True to her name, she’s wearing a cat pin on her shirt, with a rainbow flag pin positioned above it.

“I like your badges,” Ryan says, surprising himself. He doesn’t know where he picked up _that_ vocabulary.

“Thanks!” she says, completely deadpan, and wiggles her thumb and index finger under her chin. “I’m a _huge_ lesbian.”

“I meant the cat,” Ryan wheezes, and decides he already likes her.

Jeremy leads him over to the bar and spells out all the names - Ryan replies with their name sign, just so he can mentally link the names with the actions. Gavin, Steffie, Matt, and Lindsay. He feels comfortable with these.

Sat at the bar, nursing a cool glass of Coca-Cola, is ‘G-R’, on the shoulder.

“This is Geoff,” says Jeremy, beaming. Geoff waves. His hands are lazy and languid, like he’s doing the breaststroke through custard. He seems content enough, though, and might even be pleased to see Jeremy.

The guy behind the bar introduces himself.

“Hi,” he says, “I’m Jack.” It’s a J that comes off the chin, and now Ryan knows he’ll never mix up the signs for ‘red’ and ‘’pink’ ever again, because Jack has a gloriously thick ginger beard. “You want anything to drink?”

“I don’t drink.”

Geoff shuffles on his barstool: “me neither. You want--?”

A sign he doesn’t know. _‘Coke’_.

“Diet?” he spells back. Geoff looks at him like he’s an idiot. That’ll be an _of course it is_ look, then. “Please,” he says, and sits in one of the barstools that has arms and a back. God, it’s a good job he’s so tall.

Ryan tries not to laugh when Jeremy sits down, because he swings his legs at height like a toddler. “How long have you signed for?” he asks, signalling at Jack for a drink.

“Six weeks,” Ryan replies. “Sorry I’m not that good.”

“No, you’re great! It’s hard at first, but we’ll go slow for you.”

“Very slow,” Ryan signs pleadingly. Jack cackles out loud when he hands over the Coke. Ryan never thought he’d miss laughter so much, but in all fairness, he doesn’t even hear it that often on the job.

Jeremy ends up drinking Sprite and outlining exactly what happens in the building - Austin Community Deaf Club is run by a big governance of Deaf members, but Austin ASL Gamers rent it out at least once a week, sometimes more. Turns out that there are a few ASL groups around, including the Austin Deaf LGBT+ Society, who the Gamers work really closely with. Turns out, there’s some... overlap.

The topics change fluidly. Despite his jarring, fragmented interpretation _and_ communication, Jeremy sticks with him, and he’s just so _easy_ to talk to that Ryan’s slightly taken aback with surprise.

“Have you signed for long?” he asks, unsure whether the question is appropriate or not.

Jeremy grins. “Since I was born,” he says, “but I’m Hearing.”

Well, _that_ is certainly interesting.

“My mom and dad,” he explains, “they’re Deaf. But my sister and I went to a hearing school. I’m a CODA - _child of deaf adult_. So I know ASL.”

“C-O-M-M-O-N?” Ryan struggles through.

An enthusiastic nod - “yeah!” Jeremy says, “me, ‘T’--” he pulls the letter upwards from his hand towards the ceiling-- “you’ll meet him later, he’s cool-- and there’s people here who are just Hearing. No Deaf adults. Michael, Lindsay--”

Geoff joins in: “my sister’s Deaf, so I learnt sign, but I hear too.”

“And there’s K-E-N-T,” Jeremy says, “his son is Deaf and their family is learning ASL for him. It’s cute.”

“Cute,” Ryan agrees. He feels a better about his hearing recovery now - surely they won’t just kick him out when he gets the ability to pick up sounds back. “So they’re not deaf?”

Jeremy signs the letter ‘D’, then blows it up huge. A capital letter. “Lots of us - we hear, but we’re Deaf. It’s cultural. Not based on your ears. Our friend Sauce--” now that couldn’t be right, even as a name sign-- “he’s mute, but he signs. He’s always spoken ASL. So he’s Deaf.”

Clearly there’s a lot of members of AASLG that Ryan hasn’t met yet, but more than that, he’s got a whole world of new politics to wrap his head around. Jeremy’s clearly on board to show him the ropes - and the rest of the group seem friendly, even though he hasn’t really been ready to talk to them yet. It’s a challenge he could probably rise to.

Ryan juts his chin out. He’s ready to be taught.


	3. Chapter 3

The next few days are filled with Ryan Carrying Out a Plan.

It’s a struggle at first - he’s not very good at standing up for extended periods of time, which is why the project takes four days to complete instead of mere hours. But he gets through it. The existing doorbell is wireless, so he takes down the outside button and in the indoor chimer and cracks open the casing to fiddle around with the transmitters. A little bit of coding and soldering and rejigging - Malone would kill him if she knew he was virtually _working_ , but he was bored, goddamnit - and soon enough, he had one half doorbell and the other half LED-flashy thing.

He installs it. Pressing the button on the outside, he peers in through the living room window - sure enough, the modified unit is flashing, strobe-like, across from the TV. At the same time, his cell phone buzzes. A horrendously basic app he’d concocted make it vibrate, letting him know that someone’s at his door.

He hobbles back inside. That was one problem out of the way.

The other part of the plan had been a little harder. The alarm clock. At the moment, not even his phone’s vibrate setting could rouse him from painkiller naps, so something stronger was clearly required.

He takes the motor out of an old, broken Xbox controller, wraps it in plastic sheeting to protect the mechanics, and puts in under his bedsheets, near the headboard. Now, with a bit of time programming from his phone, it would vibrate annoyingly until he managed to turn it off.

 _No more unscheduled lie-ins_ , he thinks grimly.

He wonders if he’s missed anything. Maybe a smoke alarm. He’s not sure of how to make that work, given it would need a network of stimuli all over his stupid fucking house, so Ryan makes a mental note to ask someone at the Deaf Club what options he has.

He tells the Uber driver to go all the way up to the door, this week, and it saves him a lot of trouble. Jeremy’s waiting for him, and seems ready to help anyway.

“Good week?”

“Yeah,” Ryan nods, “I’ve been fixing my house.”

Jeremy shoots him a concerned look. “But… your leg.”

“Fixing,” he repeats, because he _just_ learnt that sign in ASL class that week, “my cell phone. Uh… Morning sound. Door sound.”

After frowning, Jeremy’s expression lights up with awe: “alarm!” he signs, tapping the side of his index finger against the other, vertical palm, like a clapper on a bell. Ryan grins in confirmation.

“And door alarm.”

“And… Door _bell_?” Jeremy spells, and does the same action. This time, instead of the index finger, it was the tip of his thumb.

Ryan repeats, committing it to memory.

“You’re improving,” he beams, and Ryan flushes with embarrassment. “You wanna play some games this week?”

He holds up his hands. “Doctor, hurt, next week,” he signs, hoping that Jeremy understands: he’s not allowed to do repetitive activities yet, just in case.

And Jeremy nods. It’s amazing how much understanding the man can convey in his expression alone. Ryan’s suddenly very thankful that ASL is such a visual language, because it gives him the perfect excuse to gaze at Jeremy’s face in detail.

He only realises he’s been staring when Jeremy turns towards the bar.

“Ryan!” Jack’s spelling out, “bring him over here! He can sit with me and Geoff.”

So Ryan smiles awkwardly at Jeremy. “If you want, you can go back to playing,” he says, nodding at the group around the TV, “I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” he says, and the two of them part ways. Jeremy heads back towards some kind of Mario Party massacre, and Ryan limps his way over to the bar.

“Diet Coke?” asks Jack.

“Please.”

Geoff, on his left-hand side, is watching the football on the TV. Ryan assumes it’s playing out loud as well as being subtitled.

“How come you’re not playing video games?” Geoff asks.

“I can’t,” Ryan says, “uh… yet. Next week.”

“You don’t gotta tell me, but how did you get hurt?”

Ryan marvels once more at how Geoff’s signing is wonderfully lazy - there’s no sharpness to his motions in the slightest. It’s a shame that Ryan can’t reply as fluently. He accepts the drink from Jack, slides some coins across the counter, and focuses on his hand.

“M-I-L-I-T-A-R-Y.”

Geoff bangs closed hands against the side of his chest, like he’s marching with a rifle, and Ryan mimics. “Army?” he spells out. “Navy?”

“...Special.”

Geoff looks impressed, and raises his glass in acknowledgement. “I was in the army,” he says, “sorry you got hurt.”

Ryan clinks their glasses together with a smirk. It feels pretty good to have some military solidarity in his life, right now. He suddenly misses his job with a pang of sadness, and does his best not to sink into that particular vein of regret.

“What do you do for a job now?”

“I’m an editor,” Geoff grins, “it’s the _dream_. All I gotta do is read some other--” a sign Ryan doesn’t know-- “work, and tell them where they’re wrong. It’s _awesome_.”

“What’s this sign?” Ryan asks, trying to copy it - it’s like pulling a ring off his index finger with the other hand. He doesn’t recognise it.

Jack crinkles up his eyes with mirth. “That’s a Gavin word,” he explains, laughing, “it means K-N-O-B, or P-R-I-C-K, like ‘dick’.”

“What’s a _Gavin word_?!” Ryan asks, bewildered, hoping there hasn’t been some huge faction of sign language he’s somehow glossed over entirely. This only makes Jack and Geoff laugh harder.

“He’s from England,” Geoff wheezes, “He learnt BSL, then ASL, and he flies _everywhere_ , so he knows more sign than the rest of us combined... That British fuck.”

“Sorry,” Jack grins, “but you’ll start using them too, if you stay here. We all do.”

“Are they all BSL?”

The two exchange a look: “some of them are just Gavin,” says Geoff. He looks very tired at the mere thought of those kind of ‘Gavin words’.

A disturbance in the air on Ryan’s other side makes him look up. It’s Michael, sliding on the barstool next to him.

“Drink?”

“Please. Blue Moon? And--”

He fingerspells _so_ goddamn fast. Good lord.

Geoff must spot the astonished look on his face, because he waves a hand to get Ryan’s attention and signs it more slowly for him. _Stella_. As in, Stella Artois. That… made sense.

Michael barely notices Ryan’s extreme focus. “How’s the game?”

“Not great,” Geoff replies, making a face. “It’s all post-season crap at this point.” He starts listing off names that Ryan doesn’t know, and interrupts himself to explain specific signs that Ryan definitely wouldn’t know - _pass, quarter, touchdown_. Even though Michael seems to be getting as annoyed as he is by the state of affairs, interjecting so often with his own prickly barbs of criticism, Geoff is remarkably collected in his disdain. Ryan thinks his interpretation of the commentary is ridiculously engaging.

Unfortunately, the man keeps going off on tangents and making up his own version of events. Entertaining, but probably not the best for an accurate recount of the game.

At some point, Gavin bounds over to check on where his beer is - he scoops it up and eyes Ryan excitedly. “ _R_ , yeah?” he asks, and exchanges his sign name. “I’m Gavin. Do you like Mario Party?”

Ryan considers this. “I don’t know,” he settles on. “I like the B-O-N-E-S one.”

Gavin lights up, repeating the spelling and extending two fingers like claws on both hands, then bashes them together. Ryan just keeps on picking stuff up in this place. “Dry Bones! We can play sometime, if you wanna. Me and--” was that someone new? “--we’re the best at Mario Party, so you’ll have to beat us if you wanna win--”

“Who’s that?” he asks, repeating the name sign. It’s like the Scout promise, tapping three fingers against his chin twice.

“That’s Michael,” Jack says from behind the bar. He uses the ‘loudmouth’ name sign, but it’s _definitely_ not the one Gavin just used. “It’s a nickname, Gavin says it’s BSL.”

“It _is_ BSL!” Gavin says, looking indignant. He twists his mouth into a variety of different shapes, but somehow always looks like he’s smiling anyway. “This-” two fingers tapping his chin - “is ‘boi’, and three makes an ‘M’. He’s my boi across a whole ocean, aren’t you, Michaelboi?”

Michael rolls his eyes when Gavin starts clinging to him, but he similarly can’t keep a smile off his face. Ryan realises that Gavin’s the only person he’s seen who uses people’s name signs to their actual face, which he’s always been told doesn’t really exist as a concept - name signs were when people were talking _about_ you, not _to_ you. That’s why you didn’t get to choose your own - someone Deaf picked it out for you when they deemed you conversation-worthy.

Michael bids his goodbyes and allows Gavin to drag him back over to the game, beers in hand and fond exasperation in tow.

Jack shakes his head.

“What?”

“We’re wondering when Michael’s gonna tell him,” Geoff signs, still staring with disinterest at the TV.

“Tell him what?”

Ryan doesn’t need sign language to gauge the looks Jack and Geoff send him: _what do you_ _think_ _?_

Well. That’s an interesting tidbit of information.

Geoff’s saying something to Jack, but there’s a word Ryan doesn’t know - it makes a lot more sense after it’s explained to him. “The chance of Michael telling him is the same fuckin’ chance of you finally getting to space.”

“Come _on_ , I’ll make it to space! I’d thrive up there--”

“You like space?” Ryan asks, and Geoff snorts.

“Yeah,” Jack says, “you know that _Alien_ tagline? ‘In space, no-one can hear you scream’? No-one can hear you do _anything_ up there, I’d have the advantage.”

The three of them are still thickly entangled in the logistics of Martian-based sign language, interspersed with annoyed flapping from Geoff’s corner when the football takes a worse turn, until Michael sidles up to the bar again.

“I’m heading home,” he says, “I’ve had my beer and my Mario Party victory. If I win again, Steffie might arrange to have me brutally murdered, so...”

“I’d pay to see that,” says Geoff drily.

“Whatever. Anyway,” Michael continues, turning on Ryan, “do you want me to drive you home? Taxis are fuckin’ expensive.”

Ryan starts to shake his head and protest; as he does, however, one of his crutches decides the slide down the side of the bar and clatter over the hardwood floor. While he doesn’t hear it, Michael clearly does. And he picks it up for him. Ryan flushes with embarrassment.

“C’mon,” he says, nodding at the door. “No trouble. Honest.”

So Ryan hoists himself down from the barstool, grateful and guilty for needing help, and ends up missing what Michael’s telling Jack and Geoff.

“What was that?”

“Just saying that I’m taking you back.”

“No,” Ryan says, mimicking the unknown sign, “what’s _that?_ ”

It’s crossed fingers, like for luck, on his chin. Then the four fingers waving in front of his face. Michael grins wickedly: “that’s _you_ ,” he says.

“Name sign,” supplies Geoff, not taking his eyes off the TV.

A stab of awe and surprise bursts icily in Ryan’s chest. It takes him a second to recover, it’s so strong. “Who gave me that?” he signs, feeling small, but Jack keeps wiping glasses and Geoff just smirks at the TV.

“Not Lindsay,” Michael tells him helpfully, and makes for the door.

Ryan’s pretty sure, even as Michael’s holding open the passenger side for him, that these ridiculous assholes aren’t gonna tell him what it means. He gives Michael his address, and watches the headlights of the car brush over the verges of the road at they start towards town. He’s never really thought about the logistics of sign language in a car, before, but he imagines it’s slower of the driver’s end of the conversation.

The radio glows a dim blue between them. Is there music playing?

There is.

He puts his hand flat against the speaker on the passenger door, and lets the drums rattle against his fingertips.

“Gavin does that,” Michael signs.

“With the music?”

He passes over his phone wordlessly, brightening the Spotify display. ‘Night By Night’ by Chromeo. Ryan’s never heard of it.

“What’s he like?”

“What, Gavin?” Michael says. “He’s the smartest moron I ever met. Knows everything about cameras you can think of. He runs a Youtube channel with his friend from England.”

“Deaf too?” Ryan asks.

“What, Dan?” says Michael, switching spelling hands as he flicks on his blinker. “Yeah, they went to a Deaf school together. He got sick pretty young and lost his hearing, so he didn’t ever go to a hearing school, I don’t think.”

Ryan suddenly remembers that Jeremy said Michael was Hearing, and though he _knew_ that, it raises several questions. “When did you start ASL?” he asks curiously.

“‘Bout six, seven years ago now? Something like that,” Michael says easily. “You pick up a lot when you hang out at the Deaf Club, it’s crazy. A lot of the older Deaf people there don’t like us, though.”

Ryan takes his hand away from the speaker. “...Why?”

And Michael actually fixes him with a brief, serious look: “AASLG aren’t like the other clubs. If they were, I might not be allowed to join.”

“Really?!”

“They don’t like that we’re younger, or that some of us are Hearing,” he says, his lip curling, “and they _definitely_ don’t like that we work with the temporarily Hard of Hearing people. We bring strangers into their club who usually don’t even stay. I can understand it, but I still think it’s fucking _stupid_.”

God, it’s lucky he’s going so slow, pulling onto the avenue that leads to Ryan’s house.

“What do you sound like?” he asks, surprising himself, because the question was out of his hands before he’d known it had arrived.

Michael grins, does a pretty little one-handed flourish, and then spells it out. “I’m from New Jersey. What about you?”

“Georgia,” Ryan says. “We’re both a long way from home.”

 _Not as much as Gavin is_ , are the unmentioned words in the car.


	4. Chapter 4

“Oh my _god_ ,” Ryan moans, out loud, because holy shit, this had been a long time coming.

“Don’t be obscene,” says Malone.

“I can’t help it. This is better than getting the cast off. This thing was _itchy_.”

The doctor who removed his leg brace nods sympathetically - unfortunately, he doesn’t catch whatever she says to Malone, because she turns his back on him. For god’s sake.

“No heroics, Haywood,” Malone tells him sternly, “I know it’s only one crutch now, but use it until you don’t have to anymore.”

It hurts him to see her like this - she’s usually so bubbly and upbeat, but there’s a layer of damage underneath her stare, flaking away bit by bit. He wonders if she left as much of herself in Beirut as he did.

“Trust me,” he says. “A dishwasher is, retrospectively, the best fucking purchase I ever made.”

She laughs, and then she coughs, wincing as she palms at her ribs, and Ryan guides her back towards her room.

“I’m getting fucking sick of this, Ry,” she confesses. “I’m tired. I wanna go back to the Agency. I miss my Battle Babe.”

Ryan misses the Agency too. A nasty scratch of jealous makes its way down his throat, and he’d swear it leaves a scar as it goes - he never even _got_ someone to have a duo nickname with, hasn’t had a partner since his last one retired eight years ago, and though Malone’s the closest to a partnership he’s got, being one more member of the squad just isn’t the same feeling. He was always the baby of his last team, until he wasn’t, and these days there’s a sizable gap between recruits and Ryan.

It’s at that point he realises that he needs to step up and _be_ the older person.

“Kia,” he says gently, “ _Takia_. I swear to God we’re gonna be back. Real soon. But you gotta take your own advice. Your partner isn’t going anywhere. She’ll be there when you get back.”

Kia looks up at him with wide eyes, and he’s struck by how much older she looks than twenty-five. It makes him wonder if he looks older than he is, too, or if he simply looks like he’s given up on the whole idea of projecting anything inside him at all.

 

* * *

 

As soon as he arrives at Gamers’ Night that week, Ryan is bombarded with video game vocabulary. It’s a good job his memory is Special Ops-oriented, too, because otherwise it might as well have gone in one eye and straight out the other.

“Okay,” says Matt, “here’s our set up. Luckily, Black Ops 2 is pretty visual-friendly already, but I added some colours for noises, and you’ll probably find your controller vibrates a little more, too.”

‘Vibrates’ is a new one - two hands, shaking, moving slowly away from the body. The buttons with assigned letters are obvious, but words like ‘T-Left’ and ‘B-Right’, for specific triggers and bumpers, were compound signs he had to keep a close eye on whilst playing. ‘Pause’. ‘Reload’. ‘Pick up’, for reviving a teammate.

Jeremy settles on the couch next to him, squaring himself up to face the onslaught of zombies. “You okay?” he asks amicably.

Yeah. Ryan’s okay. Why wouldn’t he be okay?

 _Uh-huh_ , he nods, agreeing, but he can already feel the colour leaving his face.

Jeremy must have given everyone else a Look, because they quickly disperse towards the bar - he eases the controller out of Ryan’s jittery hands, and lays both Ryan’s and his down on the couch.

“What’s up?”

“I can’t,” Ryan starts, and then cracks his knuckles, trying to get the airy tension out of them. “I-- _Military_ \--”

Jeremy waves his hands to dispel Ryan’s speech fragments, like he’s saying, _hey, wait a second_. “You’re okay. It’s fine. We got lots of other games - we got games without guns, we can play one of those tonight. You don’t have to say sorry for how you feel.”

“But,” Ryan tries, “the others--”

“--can play a different game for one fuckin’ night,” Jeremy finishes kindly. “Breathe, buddy.”

Ryan likes the sign for buddy. It’s two linked index fingers. Like they really are close to each other.

He holds his breath, and lets it out again. There’s a big flash of colour and pain when he closes his eyes, but there’s no rumbling explosion noises closing in on him, and somehow that makes him feel a little better about the whole thing.

When he opens his eyes again - heart rate slowing, hands steadying - Jeremy’s gaze is torn between him and something over Ryan’s shoulder. He twists around, and manages to catch Lindsay asking: _is Ryan okay?_

She’s using that name sign again. Every time he sees it, it forces him to remember that under this roof, he’s among friends.

And Jeremy looks to him for an answer.

So he nods.

“Yeah,” Jeremy signs back. He’s making his signing bigger - louder, almost - as if to compensate for the fact that she’s on the other side of the hall. “We might play London 2012, instead.”

Behind Lindsay, Gavin starts whining about archery. Ryan didn’t know that word before, but… Well, it’s a pretty obvious sign.

It goes really well after that hiccup, actually. Steffie brings him over a root beer with a huge smile, and turns out to be really good at the Weightlifting minigame mechanic; Michael’s character almost drowns during the Swimming 100 Metres, floating face-down in the water for an alarming period of time.

The Shooting trials earn him some gently concerned glances, but to be honest, Ryan’s not that bothered by the guns. The extended threat of Call of Duty is what had put him off. In this dumb Olympics game, the only enemy is a board with a target emblazoned on it. He pulls in a fairly decent score. That, coupled with the fact that Gavin also squeezed onto the couch, pressing Jeremy up against Ryan’s side, leaves him feeling much, much happier.

Lindsay, as their official scorer, announced the final medal count between the four of them - Gavin scraped his way into first place by a single point. Michael leaps to his feet and throws his arms out, signing _FREE!_ so widely that he catches Matt in the crotch by accident.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, signing as best as he can through the laughter. Matt, who’s turned the colour of Jack’s name sign, waves him away in acceptance.

“I’d better go,” Ryan signs, aside to the others.

“Aw, really?” says Gavin. His mouth has flattened into a comically miserable straight line.

He fumbles for his crutch: “I have PT in the morning,” he says apologetically, and prepares to shift his weight in the least painful way possible.

Jeremy sticks out a hand - Ryan looks for the words in it, before realising that he’s offering to help him stand, and agrees gratefully. He’s in pretty great shape, all things considered, but he’s still not the lightest guy in the world. There’s minimal wincing when he rises, gripping Jeremy’s forearm for stability.

“Thanks.”

“No problem, pal,” he says. Sign speakers didn’t usually pepper their speech with terms of endearment; though Ryan’s mind was translating it literally, maybe a more accurate version would have been _I helped you because we’re friends_. “I’ll walk you outside?”

They say goodbye to everyone on the way out, and Jeremy leans back against the building, letting the cool evening air wash over him. “Daylight Savings, soon,” he grins. “Then we’ll have our light back.”

“And the heat,” Ryan adds. Jeremy pulls a face. “What, you don’t like summer?”

“I’m from Massachusetts.” It’s a quick sign, but Jeremy’s mouthing of the word is unmistakable. “I’m not used to summer in Texas yet.”

“Boston?” he spells.

“Close to. You’re from Georgia, right? We could’ve called you ‘peach’. Goddamnit.”

“What _did_ you call me?” Ryan asks dubiously. He uses a plural ‘you’ gesture; he has a suspicion that his name sign is a Gavin word.

Jeremy shushes himself. _Not telling_.

“B-A-S-T-A-R-D,” he signs back good-naturedly.

Jeremy erupts into laughter, pulling his hand up to his face vertically, like he’s split it in half. “ _Bastard_ ,” he says, eyes full of mischief, and presses his hand between his eyebrows a few times emphatically, trying to get Ryan to copy.

Ryan tries his best, but for some reason, he can’t get his thumb to tuck in properly, and it keeps positioning the gesture on either side of his nose. Jeremy laughs harder and reaches up to correct it, folding Ryan’s thumb so the hand lays flat against the bridge.

For a second or two, they settle into the nonsensical moment: Jeremy touching his face, under the lamplight of the deaf club, whilst Ryan correctly signs the word ‘bastard’ at him. They must look like grinning idiots out here in the dark, but Ryan can’t bring himself to care. He’s taking everything in like intel, wondering when something’s going to shift and curl and make time start to move in a straight line again.

Distantly, a car’s headlights peer around the corner. Ryan’s taxi is winding its way down the gravel pathway.

“See you next week?” Jeremy asks. He looks hopeful.

Ryan bites his lip, nods, and watches Jeremy back up into the building again - still facing him, still smiling, and only breaking eye contact when he bumps into the doorframe past the porch. He flushes red, but neither of them formally say goodbye.

It occurs to Ryan, in the backseat of the Uber, that his analytical eye has been betraying him. His assessment of situations in the Deaf Club isn’t intel.

It’s a fucking _crush_.


	5. Chapter 5

_Steffie Hardy invited you to ‘AASLG...BT+, May Meeting’._

 

Ryan blinks at his inbox - he _never_ gets emails from Facebook, because he barely uses it. It’s a civvie Facebook, after all, and since social media is a big no-no when an agent is in the field - on _secret missions_ , and the like - he just doesn’t touch it. Hardly even filled out the profile.

It’s not even under his real name. What the fuck, Steffie.

 

_[You are now connected on Messenger.]_

**How the hell did you find this account?**

**_It’s linked to the email you listed for emergency correspondence at the club._ **

**Fuck,** Ryan types, then thinks better off it, _then_ decides that actually, it sums up his feelings quite well.

**_I didn’t realise it was secret. I can change it if you want?_ **

**Nah, it’s my civilian account... I was just surprised.**

**_Me too, ‘James King’. Nice going._ **

 

Ohhhhhh, he’s _never_ gonna live this this one down.

Over the next few days, he and Steffie chat a little more - she seems to be on top of _everything_ organisationally, reassuring him that the LGBT+ event was invisible on Facebook, that he didn’t have to come if he was straight or cis, but that not inviting him would have meant her assuming as she didn’t want to do _that_ either, and _‘Steffie, you’ve really been very considerate so far, you don’t have to keep apologising’_ , and _‘oh, okay, see you at Gamers then Ryan!’._

He arrives that week a little earlier than everyone else; Jeremy, Matt, and someone Ryan doesn’t recognise are sat with the gamers’ setup, but Jack and Geoff are yet to arrive, and there’s no sign of any of the others, either.

“Hi.”

“Hey!” Jeremy says, twisting around on the couch, and begins to introduce him with an exchange of name signs. “Ryan, T-up. T-up, Ryan.”

The man takes pity on him, spelling it out with such startling efficiency that he could almost be waggling his fingers in greeting.  _Trevor_.

“What’s the ‘up’ sign?” Ryan asks.

“Rocket,” Jeremy grins, as Trevor looks at him from the corner of his eyes, like he hates how much it’s mentioned. “Trevor’s an engineer.”

“Not at the moment,” he protests. “I’m just building computers right now...”

Matt signs _rocket_ at him more forcefully, and Trevor purses his lips in disapproval.

“What’s the game?” Ryan asks, trying to change the subject before the actual children in front of him started to bicker.

“Do you know ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’?” Jeremy says.

When Ryan shakes his head, Matt waves for attention over by the TV. He’s hooked up his laptop to the HDMI ports, projecting the screen and controlling it with a wireless mouse. “Horror,” he explains. “I put in sound prompts and subtitles so you can ‘hear’ the enemies. And I took out some of the visual noise until the harder levels, because it’s too much to focus on otherwise.”

“So you just have to… live?”

“Survive,” Matt and Jeremy correct him, pointing at their mouths. It’s the same sign as ‘live’, but the mouth shape is different.

“Yeah,” says Trevor, “Jeremy’s really bad at it.”

Jeremy gives him a friendly shove. “Bastard,” he signs, grinning, but he’s looking slyly at Ryan from the corner of his eye when he says it.

He plays for a little while - they make it halfway through Night Two each time, because Matt’s put in a vibration mechanic for that sneaky fucking fox and it’s _hard._ When Steffie arrives with Gavin and Lindsay in tow, she gives him a bigger wave than the others, and he feels inclined to pass the mouse directly to her.

This means he sees Lindsay signing a word, repeatedly, that he’s never come across before.

“Where were they? Overseas?”

“London, I think,” Gavin’s saying. “There was a photoshoot there, definitely, I remember - _sign_ \- saying to me about it.”

“It’ll be great to have them back.”

Approaching them, he’s glad for that his leg isn’t twinging too much today - it would be nice to hold a conversation without constantly pausing to lean on his crutch. Ryan taps Gavin on the shoulder, very gently with the back of two fingers, and immediately apologises for eavesdropping - “who’s - _sign_ -, though?” he asks, feeling proud of himself, because he’d managed to work out from context that it’s a _name_.

“Jon!” Gavin spells, and Ryan makes the sign again. It’s a big sweep from the forehead to the back of the neck, ending with a flourish somewhere behind the ears. The last bit is _hair_ \- Ryan’s not certain what the big sweep is, but he’s sure he’ll figure it out if he meets the guy.

“Jon puts on performance nights,” Lindsay explains, beaming, “they’re _super_ fun. There’s songs in ASL, and poems, and one of our friends did a Bob Ross routine one time, and we all painted whilst he explained what to do. If it’s on stage and in sign, then you can do it.”

“Songs?”

Gavin makes two peace signs with his hands, cycles them in front of his mouth, and transforms them into open, cycling claw shapes.

“That’s BSL,” Lindsay says, rolling her eyes, “he says it means--”

“Sign-aoke!” spells Gavin gleefully, “you have _singing--_ ” dragging one hand’s fingers back and forth over his bicep-- “and _sign--_ ” like the claw shape, but only index fingers-- “but it’s so much _better_ in BSL. _Singing, sign_. Signaoke.”

“Gavin word,” says Ryan, who is still horrendously inarticulate, and still rather embarrassed that he likely comes off as a troglodyte who somehow, _somewhere_ , picked up some gestures. The others don’t seem to mind, but he _does_.

Lindsay snorts. “That’s absolutely correct.”

“ _Ryan_ \- would you come watch, Ryan? Jeremy does the best stuff, he always does. It’s ‘cos he’s from Boston, they sign so _fast_ up there--”

“Yeah, I’d come to watch,” Ryan says cheerfully.

Gavin nudges Lindsay in the upper arm, narrowly missing her chest, and she half-heartedly slaps at him. It’s like a conversation in silent bickering playing out in front of him:

 _-told you he would--!_ _  
_ _-Shut up, Gavin._

“Would you do anything?” he says, trying to change the subject.

“I’ve got a kick-ass song to show my girlfriend,” says Lindsay, “I can’t wait to show everyone.”

“I just come for the music, usually,” says Gavin. “I like the bass. Michael shouts at me when I hug the speakers, but it’s just so _cool_.”

Ryan makes a face, hoping that it says: _eh, I’m not so bothered about music._

“You _what_?” Gavin gapes. “Don’t you miss it? Noises?”

“Noise, yeah,” says Ryan. “I miss my alarm. I miss my doorbell. I miss voices and laughing. But music? I don’t really have any songs I really, _really_ love. I don’t know.”

Gavin calls him something in BSL, or maybe in a completely made up sign language of his own making.

It attracts Jeremy’s attention. “He called you ‘crazy’,” he says, signing the equivalent.

The man pulls a long face and rapidly spells it out. “No, I called him _mental_. Totally different meaning,” he grumbles. “I’m gonna go find Michael. _Don’t miss music_ … Eurgh.”

He wanders over to the direction of the bar, already looking enthusiastic at the prospect of annoying Geoff some. Remaining  within the games area, however, Jeremy pats Lindsay on the shoulder, signalling that she can swap in for him for a couch seat, and then beams up at Ryan. God, the height difference is so _endearing_.

“How’s your alarm and doorbell?”

“Eh,” says Ryan, wiggling his fingers noncommittally. “I’m more worried about what to do with… alarm… fire?”

“Smoke alarm,” Jeremy corrects. “You know you can buy alarm systems, right?”

“I wouldn’t know what to get,” Ryan admits. “Smoke alarms weren’t even the first thing I thought of.”

“You just gotta scope out what you need,” says Jeremy. He’s so straight to the point, about everything - no indecisiveness, just a problem to solve, and whether or not he can do it. “Look in every room, see if you missed anything. There’s some papers with websites on in the porch--”

“Will you,” Ryan says nervously, “come… help me? Please? See if what I’ve done is okay?”

And Jeremy fucking lights up with excitement. “Are you kidding me? I’d love to! I so wanna see your DIY alarm clock, oh _wow_ \--”

(Ryan tries not to think about how that’s in his _bed_.)

“--When’s best for you?”

 

* * *

 

After the Deaf Club closes up for the night, Jeremy exchanges a ride home for a chance to see Ryan’s engineering experiments.

“This is so cool. Did you just _-sign-_ the old doorbell?”

(The sign is _cut_ , which looks exactly like what it means, but Ryan had just wanted to make sure.)

“Ryan, this is _amazing_ ,” he says, squinting at the inside of the modified shell. “And it gets sent to your _cell phone_?! Oh, wow. You’ll die in a fire, sure, but it’ll be with the tightest guest-alert system in Texas.”

“So smoke detectors, then?”

“And something for your home phone line,” Jeremy says. Ryan hadn’t bothered to consider that - he’d just pulled the cord straight out of the wall when he’d gotten home from the hospital, tired and pain-wracked and pissed off. A home phone line, when his hearing was a little further down the road to recovery, sounded like a good idea.

“I’ll take a look online, then.”

“Cool,” says Jeremy, “seriously, buddy, this is _genius_. Gray-door would love this.”

Ryan tilts his head, perching on the edge of his dining table: “name sign…?”

“Yeah, Marcus. I actually don’t know why he’s called that.” Jeremy stares into the distance for a second, like the thought of not knowing the story behind his name sign is something that really bothers him. Then he shrugs: “I’ll ask him at the May Meeting, I guess.”

Ryan straightens his back. “Is that the one Steffie gave to me?”

“You mean _sent_?” It’s similar to ‘give’, but the hands touch before moving away from each other. “The LGBT one. Yeah, that’s the May Meeting. I’ll be there.”

“Me too,” Ryan says, like he hadn’t decided literally in that second.

Jeremy dares to look hopeful, almost. “You… You will?”

“I’m B-I, so, yeah,” he says. It’s a leap of faith, considering he can’t even say the word properly, but what the hell. Jeremy likes his stupid fucking DIY Deaf Doorbell and taught him how to say swears, so he might as well come out to him already.

“I’m bi, too,” Jeremy says, using the same spelling form as Ryan had done. He looks almost shy about it, but quickly attempts to recover: “I guess I’ll see you then. Or wait-- I’ll see you at Gamers’ night before then…? Next week? I’ll, um. See you. Next week… Yeah.”

Ryan knows he’s got a huge red flush spreading over his face, but he can’t bring himself to care. “Yeah,” he nods, gently. “...Thanks for the ride home.”

“You’re welcome,” says Jeremy automatically. “Thanks for showing me your cool stuff.”

“No problem.”

He sees Jeremy out to the porch and watches the headlights trickle away, heading towards town; Jesus _Christ_ , he’s got it bad. The first thing he does after he shuts the door is to go on Facebook.

First, he changes his name back to the more appropriate _Ryan Haywood_. He is, after all, on indefinite leave at present. After that, he has two far more nerve wracking tasks to carry out, in responding with _Going_ to the May LGBT+ Meeting, and, finally, looking up Jeremy’s profile. (His cover photo is a _swarm_ of cats, clambering over his reclining body… He looks like he’s in fucking paradise. What a loser.)

Ryan hesitates for a second, then taps _+Add Friend_ , his heart in his mouth. Done. Sorted. Now all he has to do is--

 _Jeremy Dooley accepted your friend request._ _  
_ _You are now connected on Messenger._

Well. That was-- that was _promisingly_ fast.

Ryan grins to himself like a stupid teenager, and starts flicking through the photos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ironically enough, I have VERY temporarily lost a significant amount of hearing until at least next week. Whoopsy! Looks like Ryan's about to get even more of my hearing troubles projected onto him.


	6. Chapter 6

It's bad, on some days. The damage doesn't come without repercussions; Ryan wakes on those mornings without his DIY alarm clock, hot pain needling through his ear canals and building behind his eyes, and immediately reaches for his painkillers.

This is different.

 **_It’s an infection_** , the audiologist confirms. She’s been wielding that little torch-ear-microscope like a dagger the whole time, and it’s a relief to see her switch it off and stash it away again. **_The side with the perforation, too. I’ll prescribe you some antibiotics._ **

**When will it clear up?** Ryan writes.

His doctor frowns. **_A few weeks, with the antibiotics. You don’t have tonsils and the perforation has almost scarred over. Then we can do your next hearing test._ **

A few weeks is doable, but holy shit, Ryan’s getting tired of constantly being in pain. It hurts to swallow, he’s got a constant ache digging into the back of his jaw, and sometimes he can’t open his eye on the left hand side, because it feels like the pain is a physical _thing_ , exerted pressure on the inside of his skull. His hands won’t stop shaking. _And this is only a mild case_.

He’s ready for an easy evening of video games, Geoff getting mad at the TV, and maybe learning some more signs.

Of course, nothing Ryan’s ready for ever works out how he wants it.

He’s early again - but this time, Gavin’s standing by the bar, with Jack, Michael, and a man Ryan doesn’t know. Gavin’s ridiculously animated, throwing his arms around like he’s about to take off from sheer excitement. As soon as he spots Ryan coming through the door, barely even needing to use the crutch anymore, he barrels over and drags them into their circle.

“And this is Ryan,” he says quickly to the man, before diving into a horrendous mixture of two-handed signing that Ryan doesn’t recognise.

The man looks at him in sympathy. Dark hair, thick eyebrows, and scruff just like Gavin has. Ryan notices that the hem of his jeans pockets are worn, and immediately thinks: _soldier_.

“Ryan!” Gavin says, using his name sign to get his attention, now. “This is Dan, he’s my very best friend from home and we work together! He doesn’t sign in ASL, only the alphabet, but I wanted him to meet everyone. Oh,” he adds, glancing at the door, “everyone’s here, I’m gonna introduce you, B!”

Dan’s sign name in ASL seems to just be his name - it’s quick and easy to spell on one hand. Gavin, however, pushes his hands together like binoculars against his chest. That’s the B from when he says BSL. It must be, like, his nickname or something.

Ryan’s about to ask Jack when exactly Dan had arrived, when he notices the man fixing Michael with concern. And Michael - well, he’s not looking too good. His elbows and back are resting against the bar, opening his body language up, but it’s not really in a friendly way. It’s coolly hostile. His eyelashes are lowered over glinting pupils, his mouth is strangely expressionless, and there’s a dangerous little line pressing itself between his eyebrows.

Ryan touches his arm lightly, right over the edges of his Gears of War tattoo, to get his attention. Michael flinches.

“You okay?”

He tries to say it gently, but it’s evidently not what Michael wanted or expected - in fact, he looks irate and embarrassed to have been caught at all, his face hardening into a reply filled with furious guilt.

Oh, _Jesus_ , Ryan thinks to himself, he’s _jealous_.

“Fine,” Michael says - not with his hands, but with a curt nod. He returns his gaze to Gavin bouncing around, and hanging _off_ , his overseas friend and co-worker. When Jack hands him his beer, he downs almost half of it in one go.

After some heated games of Trivial Pursuit, which Trevor _demolished_ , Ryan heads back over to the bar with a couple of second place rankings under his belt. His hands are starting to ache from the controller, and he’d rather not aggravate them too much, so he’s content to sit by Geoff and enjoy a cold Coke with his friends.

Dan wanders over to the bar at the same time as him.

 **_Hi :)_ ** , he’s written, on a fresh page halfway through a flipped open notebook, and slides it over to Ryan. It suddenly strikes him that Dan’s all alone in a country where, effectively, he can’t speak the language, and that he probably gets a lot of use out of those blank pages.

 **Nice to meet you Dan!** , he scrawls back messily. **When did you arrive?**

To his immensely heart-wrenching surprise, Dan lights up when he sees that Ryan is the one who’s starting the conversation.

**_Last night. Gavin said I had to meet you all, he was right that you’re all so nice_ **

**Staying long?**

**_A month,_ ** Dan writes, **_Gav and I are filming for work._ **

**Cool! What’s work like?**

Ryan feels a little guilty that he hasn’t really asked Gavin about his job. All he knows is what Michael’s told him - cameras and YouTube. As it turns out, Dan’s great at filling him in. They run a _sound_ channel, with slow motion and crazy close ups and props and _all sorts_. It’s supposed to give visual sensory information for something audible; the most popular videos have been sizzling pizza, popcorn popping in slow motion, and the booming of speakers whilst they’re covered in poster paint.

 **_But Gav does other filming, too, obviously_** , Dan grins. **_He’s a dab hand at slow mo. Gets contracted out by studios all the time._ **

**So he films for movies and stuff???**

**_Yeah, that’s how he and Michael met_** , he writes, and frowns at him. **_Did nobody tell you that?_ **

Hell _no_ , nobody has told him that, and Ryan hopes his face conveys the sentiment. Dan takes back the notebook and starts scribbling furiously, so Ry takes the opportunity to ask Jack for another round for the two of them.

When Dan passes the pages back over, Ryan holds the notebook up to his eyes and scrutinises it.

**_One of Gav’s first US shoots was in New Jersey. Michael’s an electrician, he was on set to maintain the equipment. Then they became mates. Gav relocated here to stay with Geoff for a while before he got a permanent place, Jeremy moved down from Massachusetts for a job and he and Michael were friends so Michael came too? It’s like a bloody soap opera. God’s sake._ **

Dan isn’t the most fluid of writers, but it gets the point across well enough. Ryan’s nodding, scanning the last sentence, when Dan flips over the page for him:

**_M’s name sign is ridiculous and all._ **

“B-O-I?” Ryan spells out, shakily, _slowly_ , in BSL.

Dan laughs humourlessly. “No,” he says, and spells it out in ASL, equally as inexperienced. “B-O-Y- _F-R-I-E-N-D_.” And taps two fingers on his chin for good measure. An M shape in BSL was three fingers on the opposite palm - and, oh, holy shit.

It's _M-boyfriend_.

“I know,” Geoff says, shaking his head from next to Ryan, and the two other men jump. “He’s a fucking idiot. They _both_ are. Honestly.”

“You _knew_?!”

“Hey, I know some BSL!” Geoff protests, then takes a huge sip of his soda. “I’m just too lazy to get involved. Fuck that. Catch me pulling anyone’s head outta their own goddamn asses _for_ them.”

“You suck,” Ryan says honestly, and turns back to Dan.

**Why aren’t they doing anything?**

**_Because they’re both half wits, probably._ **

When Michael comes back over, Ryan captures Dan’s attention by asking to trade numbers with him, and they immediately both text each other. He needn’t have bothered - Michael offers to get Dan his next drink in fragmented BSL, and Dan manages to say thank you, then pulls out _an entirely new notebook_ and starts afresh. Smart man.

He shoots a glance over at Gavin, who’s bursting out into laughter at something Matt Bragg said,  and wonders for the umpteenth time when someone might tell him what his sign name means.

 

* * *

 

“Picked up your meds.”

Ryan doesn’t actually hear this sentence being said to him - what actually happens is that the pharmacy bag bounces across his bedsheets, he looks up in alarm, and has Kia repeat what she’d sent to him. It’s a good job he was expecting her, or… Well, he’s in too much pain right now to apprehend an intruder, realistically, but he’s sure he could give it a decent shot. Had she not been Kia.

Whatever.

“You,” he winces, reaching a shaking hand for the bag, “are a lifesaver.”

“I know,” she grins.

That’s more like it. He feels better even just seeing her smiling, because it’s been too long - too long since Beirut, since the broken ribs, since the fire and the sulphur and the ‘putting the _bang_ in _the whole shebang_ ’ business.

“How’s your head?”

“Hurts,” he croaks. Reaching for his crutch, he begins the long walk into the kitchen, but he doesn’t need it - the angel of an agent at his side offers up one ridiculously toned forearm and lets him lean all his weight on her.

“You’re a good kid, Malone.”

“Shut the fuck up, Grandpa.”

“Yep,” he wheezes, and turns the coffee machine on. He only ever uses it for hot chocolate; this time is no exception. Hot chocolate in May. Time to distract his body with sugar.

“Need me to help?” Kia asks tactfully, avoiding the phrase ‘want me to’, because Ryan _doesn’t_ want help. He wishes he could do all of this his damn self. But he can’t.

He slides the ear drops over. “Pain’s making my fingers useless.”

She unscrews the little jar, and Ryan can see the safety locks click in the jumping of the lid. “I can see that,” she says. “Haven’t even texted back your new boy yet.”

“Dan messaged me?”

“No, that Jeremy guy you told me about. Tilt your head.”

He leans over and clenches his jaw, willing the pain away - there’s a throbbing ache in his teeth, an icicle of stabbing pressure down his neck, and something awful building behind his left eye, like the manifestation of an ear infection is trying to escape from his face. His eyes prickle. He must let out a little cry, because Kia is gentle with his face and crouches down at eye level to chat with him.

“You okay?”

“Peachy. All done?”

“Didn’t even start, Haywood.”

“At least pass me my cell.”

Ear drops sting. A lot. Kia makes coffee in the meantime, as Ryan’s white-knuckling through the allotted waiting period.

**_Found a great smoke alarm package, check it out pal!_ **

**That looks awesome. Thanks, Jeremy.** **  
** **Think Michael would install it for me? I hear he’s an electrician.**

 **_He might, for a price._ ** **_  
_ ** **_(The price might be humiliation)_ **

**That’s okay. I give really enthusiastic blowjobs. He won’t wanna refuse.**

“Need the other way, too?”

“Nah,” he says, sitting up and accepting his hot chocolate. “I’ll take a swift kick to the ballsack for flirting too much with this guy, though.”

“Whatcha sayin’?”

“That I’m gonna blow the electrician at the Deaf Club so he installs smoke alarms for me.”

Kia raises her eyebrows. “Mixed messages, there, Ry. What did he say back?”

Ryan checks:

 **_Maybe if your name’s Gavin…_ ** **_  
_ ** **_Last I checked, it wasn’t, though, so you might wanna find someone else to blow?_ **

“Oh, he’s flirting back,” Ryan grins. “It’s been pretty fun.”

“Ask him out, you fucking moron.”

“Maybe I will,” he replies, thinking about his leg, and his temperamental hands, and his flashbacks and shaking, and his job, and his whole damn life, and thinks, secretly, _maybe I won’t._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy howdy, am I in pain! Sorry, Ry. Gotta channel this somewhere.


	7. Chapter 7

**How are you holding up in the Land of the Free?** **  
** **The Land WITH the Free?**

**_That was terrible and I’m not speaking to you anymore_ **

**:(**

**_ASL is SO HARD, Ryan!! There’s too many bloody right angles!!!_ ** **_  
_ ** **_How the hell do you all point your middle fingers down like that?! Ridiculous is what it is. Like flipping hand ballet._ **

**BSL doesn’t have that shape?**

**_OF COURSE IT DOESN’T_ ** **_  
_ ** **_IT’S A DAMN IDIOT SHAPE, RYAN._ **

 

Ryan thinks he knows where Gavin got his fixation with name repetition from.

It’s the big night tonight. And by that, Ryan means that he’s emotionally preparing himself to Get Gay at the LGBT+ meeting. He’s well aware of two things - that pretty much everyone knows he is (was?) in the military, and that not many people at all know he’s going to be in attendance tonight as a bisexual man. Ryan’s not sure how those two things are going to mix.

As it is, he quickly finds out he’s got nothing to worry about.

When he enters the club, it’s a lot like Gamers, except just about everyone’s crowded around the seating by the bar and there are no TVs in sight, save for the one that shows Geoff’s football games. Speaking of Geoff, he and Jack were in their usual spots.

“Do you ever move?” he asks, sidling up to where Geoff’s nursing his Coke.

Geoff raises his eyebrows. “Now why the hell would I wanna do a thing like that?” he says, and chugs his drink whilst Jack roars with laughter at his laziness.

Ryan orders a Coke of his own and scans the room. He feels weirdly shy without an objective in mind.

There’s a tap to his arm from next to him. A feminine hand. One that’s decidedly not Geoff’s.

“Hi!” signs the young woman. She’s _beautiful_. A big bright smile, and shiny long hair, and perfectly manicured nails that make her signing very pretty to look at. She beams at him. “You’re Ryan, right?”

Ryan sets his drink down. “How do you know my sign name?”

“Lindsay told me,” she says, “I’m M-E-G. They call me--”

Meg signs her name. A ‘M’ shape on her other hand, extended out from her chest.

“Why’s that?” Ryan asks, feeling nosy.

“It’s the sign for ‘model’,” she says, spelling it, “I can’t even remember who gave it to me, now, it might have been Michael. You’ve met Michael, right?”

“Yeah, ‘course.”

“Did you come here with anyone?”

“There’s no-one,” he says, which sounds a hell of a lot sadder in sign than if he could say it audibly.

Meg makes an ‘ _aw_ ’ face. “You can come and sit with me and my girlfriend, if you like!” she smiles, “we’ll introduce you to anyone you don’t know already.”

She leads him over to where the tables have been set up, kind of like an alfresco restaurant. It’s unfamiliar. They’re not exactly needed at Gamers’ night, where the couches in the corner are plenty seating for all of them.

Then Meg plops down into a chair directly beside Lindsay.

“Hey, Ryan!” she says. “You’ve met Meg.”

“I have,” he says, digesting the information. “She’s your girlfriend.”

“She’s cute, right?” Lindsay says. “Look. I love her. She’s got a squishable face.”

As Lindsay reaches over to smoosh Meg’s cheeks lovingly, making her girlfriend look briefly like she’s doing an unwilling chipmunk impression, Ryan marvels at his own sense of sign voice. Lindsay hadn’t _said_ ‘squishable’. She’d said ‘soft’. But the action that had followed, and the tone of their conversation, had made him consciously replace it with something else in English.

Brains are pretty neat.

“Do you know--” M shapes with both hands, coming vertically out from the nose?

“Nope.”

“What about Cookie?”

“I’d definitely remember someone called ‘Cookie’,” Ryan says firmly.

Turns out, they’re some lovely people named Mariel (whose sign came from ‘Mexico’, apparently) and Max, whose last name is reportedly hard enough for hearing people to figure out, and he actually likes ‘Cookie’ a lot anyway so why not?

Ryan’s head is spinning by the time he’s had a brief conversation with Patrick, a lanky redhead who shows Ryan pictures of his dogs that they both coo over for several minutes. He squeezes his eyes shut and it gets worse - ah, infection. Time for more painkillers.

He excuses himself, grabbing some tap water from Jack and waving at Steffie and Trevor on his way out. They seem to be enthusiastically doing math, or scheduling, or something, and Ryan doesn’t think he’s got the brain cells to properly say ‘hi’ right now.

The yard out by the fire exit is cool and dingy, bathed in purple twilight and yellow, flickering light from inside the club building. Even the grass looks dark at this point in the evening. Ryan downs some pills with his water and leans against the brickwork, his crutch propped up against his leg.

He sighs. Relief.

There’s a hot rush of air and a presumed clattering as the fire exit swings open beside him. Ryan almost jumps out of his skin. A man emerges from the incandescent glow, but he looks immediately apologetic as soon as he spots Ryan throwing foil sleeves everywhere.

“Sorry, sorry!” he says frantically, switching between apologising and plucking Ryan’s painkillers from the ground with deft hand movements. His smile is white and genuine with an underlying layer of devil-may-care brazenness.

“It’s okay,” Ryan says, stumbling his way through the words. “I’m just a little… jumpy?”

He must have conveyed it at least halfway decently, because the man is pressing his painkillers back into his hands. At rather a close proximity, mind you - enough to be noticeable, but not enough to be uncomfortable for strangers. Ryan thinks maybe he doesn’t mind the closeness - the man is dark haired, in huge glasses and a loose linen shirt, and frankly, he smells _amazing_.

“It’s my fault, no, I’m sorry,” he’s signing, “I’m J-O-N, sorry for attacking you--”

“Jon?” Ryan signs, except it’s Jon’s name sign, the one with the big sweep down the back of the head.

“Oh!” Jon says, looking pleased. “You know! Are you part of AASLG? You must be Ryan. _Great_ name sign, by the by. I have to say, it’s very accurate.”

Ryan scrunches up his face petulantly. “No-one will tell me what it means,” he grumbles.

“You prove it to everyone as soon as they see you,” Jon says, smiling reassuringly, “don’t worry about it. I bet they’ll tell you when they’re ready for you to hear it.”

“What does yours mean?”

Jon leans in. “What do you think it means?”

“Uh,” says Ryan, flushing, “there’s no letter, and there’s ‘hair’ in there?”

“That’s most of it,” grins Jon, and reaches back to take down his bun. There’s what Ryan can only comprehend as an _explosion_ of hair. There’s so _much_ of it. Though it only just about reaches his shoulders, it’s clear that Jon has a ridiculously thick mane, even when it isn’t styled to be let down.

“Lion,” Jon spells, “it’s halfway between ‘hair’ and lion’.”

And he ties it back up.

“Lionhair Jon,” Ryan tries, and they both grin. “Suits you.”

“Because of the pride?” Jon says. He flexes his arms, and Ryan spots his vest for the first time. It reads ‘BOTH’ in varying colours to create the bi pride flag.

“Because of the leadership,” Ryan clarifies, feeling himself blush. Jon’s arms are… nice. “I’ve been told you’re the one who organises the performance nights.”

“I am,” Jon says, “and Patrick and Steffie are the ones who actually sort it out for me… I do presenting and organise performance slots. Why, are you interested?”

“In watching, yeah,” says Ryan quickly. “I don’t… do performing. At _all_.”

“Oh, I think you’d be a great performer,” is the flirty reply, because Ryan’s not great at picking up flirting, but damn if this guy isn’t coming off super strong. It’s refreshing for it not to be in a warning sign way, which is why Ryan stopped going to gay bars in Atlanta when he was twenty-four - no, Jon’s just outrageously sweet and charismatic, in an approachable, awkward kind of way.

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he chuckles nervously at the rubber stopper on the end of his crutch.

Jon brushes the back of his hand against Ryan’s arm. “Hey,” he says, “you’ve not been coming here long, right? Wanna see something cool?”

“I’m a trained special forces operative.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

With the semi-teasing warning between them, Jon gestures inside the building, and they both come back through the fire escape. Ryan’s never been in this part of the building before - there are changing rooms, for both sports and dramatic uses, and he can see the steps up to the stage from here. Going through tiny rooms around the back of the stage, painted scenery boards and tech boxes litter the backstage thoroughfare. It’s a lot cooler in here than it is in the main hall.

Jon stops at one of the backstage cupboards, and flicks on the light. There are covered boxes and tarpaulins lining the walls. A trolley full of musical instruments, percussion ones.

“What is this?”

“For the kids,” Jon says, “they do an activity club with the little ones with all sorts of stuff. The best thing, though--”

And he opens the lid of an ancient-looking upright piano, nestled in the corner.

“Look,” he says, bustling over to Ryan and directing his palms out. “Put your hands here-- and here-- and then I’ll play, and you can feel it, right?”

Jon takes a seat at the worn piano stool, pops his knuckles noiselessly, and starts to play a tinkling melody. Ryan can tell it’s high pitched for the most part, not just from Jon’s position on the keys, but from the _sensation_. Lower notes make a deep rumbling vibration. Higher notes are more of a tightly-wound buzz against his hand.

Ryan suddenly wishes he could hear it.

He’s not cared much about music much in the past. He thinks he knows a little how Gavin feels, now, in a world where melodies were undetectable.

Jon looks over his shoulder, but doesn’t stop playing. Ryan’s eyes similarly catch music, and turn to find Jeremy in the doorway, looking very amused indeed.

“Hey, you came,” says Ryan. He feels remarkably shy all over again.

“I did,” Jeremy nods. “Whatcha up to?”

“You can feel it,” Ryan says, “look, it’s so cool.”

Jon plays for a few moments more whilst Jeremy tests it out, too; he leans over Ryan’s chest to reach the top of the piano, in the crowded storage room, and grounds his hands against the body of the piano.

Then Jon stops. “I wasn’t expecting to ‘love-sing’ for two people tonight.”

“Shut up,” snorts Jeremy.

At the same time, Ryan says: “what’s ‘love-sing’?”

“He means S-E-R-E-N-A-D-E,” Jeremy tells him, rolling his eyes. Jon waggles his eyebrows from on his piano stool. “You’d better make room for a fourth, Michael tipped us off that you were in here, and he was dead set on coming to have a look after taking a piss.”

“Ooh, four,” Jon signs quietly.

Right on cue, Michael pokes his head into the room. “Play me a song, Music Man!” he crows, signing sharply. “I can’t wait until performance night, not like Gavin does. You gotta sate my musical appetite right now. And no Elton John--”

“You were playing Elton John?” Ryan asks.

“Yeah, it was ‘Your Song’,” Michael says, “I don’t do song romance, that’s not my jam. I bet Jon doesn’t know anything other than romance, though, he’s pretty fluent in it.”

Jon looks him straight in the eyes and starts to play something high. It rapidly modulates down scales and scales, settling towards the lower end of the middle, and Ryan discreetly stabs a hand out to feel the new song.

“You motherfucker,” says Michael, “that’s genius.”

Jeremy cackles silently. “I didn’t know you could do that!”

“What is it?” Ryan asks, wishing desperately that he could pick up any of the notes audibly.

“He’s playing fuckin’... ‘Hotline Bling’, that Drake song,” Michael says, dissolving into jagged laughter, “I promise that if you play that on stage, I’ll do the dance from the video. I’ll fuckin’ commit to that, dude.”

“You’d better,” Jon warns.

Jeremy braces himself on his knees. There’s tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. He does a half hearted little rendition of the dance, flicking his fingers in the air randomly. Michael seems to take offense to the half assery and presses himself against Jeremy’s back, the two of them moving their legs to the couple’s part of the music video.

“I’ll buy you a drink for sitting through that,” Jon tells him, and Ryan flashes a big smile in response. Michael and Jeremy laugh all the way to the bar with them, and he doesn’t regret attending for a single second.


	8. Chapter 8

_Steffie Hardy invited you to ‘Austin Community Deaf Club - ♪Performance Night!♪’._

_Ryan Haywood is_ **_Going._ **

 

“There’s been talk,” says Malone, “that they’re gonna try and bring in an ASL tutor for our entire division. Mandatory lessons.”

“Seriously?” asks Ryan, looking up from his Facebook profile. “Is that ‘cos of me...?”

“Kinda. You’re hardly the first to have an ear-related accident,” she grins. “But someone up top reckons we need it for tactical maneuvers. I guess I never thought about it that way - enemy militias from all over have a chance of knowing American tactical hand signals, but they’re _way_ less likely to know sign language.”

“Man, I am _so_ gonna be top of the class,” he smirks. “I even know my word order better now, y’know. Ready to get your ass beat?”

Malone splutters. “You’ve never beat my ass!” she laughs, but honestly, it cheers Ryan up knowing that he might have been the catalyst for something bigger than himself.

 

* * *

 

Ryan makes himself a promise.

It’s another week of almost clinical observation - he can’t seem to switch off, but it’s been his job for a decade and a half, so sue him. He finally meets ‘Sauce’, who turns out, after an embarrassing mistake on Ryan’s part, to _not_ be Trevor. He’s actually a lovely guy called Alfredo who just looks startlingly like Trevor from behind, and also from the front. Alfredo’s kind of a computer wizard. He spends frighteningly little time setting up everyone’s laptops to work together with the modded games.

“Do you wish it was faster?” Ryan asks him, wary of the plummeting connection speed with every player who joins.

“Of course I do,” Alfredo laughs, “but we work with what we have.”

Ryan can see that. Geoff and Jack’s buddy Kent comes in one night - not to drink, but to prepare for the next morning. He’s hearing, but his kid isn’t, and Kent’s a real good guy enough to bring him up in a culture which isn’t his own, as best as he can. His sign name is ‘Cook’, for his last name, flipping his palm over on his other hand. Tap-tap. Ryan finds out he has a firm handshake, a lousy but enthusiastic grasp on ASL, and a total devotion to the Deaf Kids’ Morning at the club.

 _Everyone’s_ happy to see Kent. They must really like him, Ryan thinks. With good reason, too; he’s heard almost eighty percent of hearing parents never learn ASL for their deaf children, which is so, _so_ terrible. Everyone likes Kent because he’s giving his kid the chance to be capital-D Deaf.

And that’s the sense of community Ryan’s become accustomed to, here. It’s nothing like army camaraderie. He watches the Gamers play soccer in the Deaf Club yard, during the evenings which are becoming rapidly lighter with every passing day - and isn’t Deaf soccer a sight to behold, might he add. Maybe it’s his background in Special Ops, but it’s a lot easier to follow than he expected. The hardest part visually is when Gavin and Dan start grandly signing in BSL together, which he later finds out is their rendition of the British national anthem.

There’s a lot of dust involved in their playing. This is mostly because the grass is totally worn down to the dirt.

It’s at that point, gazing into the kicked up grit in the pre-summer sun, that he promises himself - the yard, the building, the activities and the people. The kids. The gravel parking lot. His _friends_.

He promises himself that he’s gonna pay them back.

It’s two nights in a row that week, because the day after Gamers’ night is the Performance Night. He’s been cleared to drive, now that his leg is a lot better and his ear infection’s cleared up, so he’s in a pretty good mood already. And the event only makes him more excited. He even got there early. Ryan’s not performing - he’s not that confident yet - but he can’t wait to see who _is_ , and what kind of acts they bring forwards.

Which is why, when he enters the hall, that he has to stop for a awestruck moment.

Man, Jon really went all out with these nights. There are four enormous speakers - on the floor and mounted, on either side of the side - and the club’s lighting rig is illuminating the entire hall in reds and blues and greens and yellows, vibrant and visually noisy. It’s not a large hall by any means, but the layout makes it look huge. A space for dancing. Tables and chairs littered randomly. Speakers lining the walls, all the way up to the bar. The Gamers’ corner has even been fully opened up, so that there’s more space by the bar.

There’s a tap on Ryan’s arm.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” he says, feeling himself flush, because Jeremy’s in a tank top and looking up at him, and Ryan’s supposed to be looking at his mouth and expression, but instead he can’t tear himself away from Jeremy’s eyelashes, and Ryan is very, _very_ gay.

Jeremy smiles even wider. “What do you think?”

“This is...”

“A lot?” he finishes.

Ryan recovers from his floundering. He’d wanted to say ‘incredible’, but he doesn’t know the sign and can’t be bothered to spell it out, so instead, he settles on: “... _big_.” And Jeremy’s shoulders shake, so he’s clearly done something right.

“Jon likes to go all out,” he admits, and slides into some signs which Ryan doesn’t understand.

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh,” says Jeremy, blinking in realisation, “ _I’m_ sorry, you’ll want the first one…”

Turns out, he’d been signing ‘protection’ and one sign, hooked at the ears, then ‘protection’ and another which cupped over the ears. Basically - _would you prefer earplugs, or headphones?_

Seeing as Ryan needs the more thorough protection, he opts for the earplugs. The Club have their own dispenser full of them, which is really neat. An earplug dispenser isn’t something you come across every day.

He assesses the hall: Lindsay and Meg are over at the bar, with Patrick and Steffie; Geoff and Jack are, predictably, in their usual, comfortable places. Michael and Gavin are sat with Dan, Alfredo, Matt, and Trevor, and all appear to be embroiled in some kind of argument about a TV show. There are even a large number of faces he’s never laid eyes upon before. The unknown group seem to be a little older than the Gamers, but admittedly not by much.

Jeremy puts a cold hand on his elbow, and steers him towards the bar. “Here,” he says, “I’ll introduce you! This is Burnie--”

He spells it out, but the man smirks and demonstrates his name sign. “It’s B-U-R-N, but little,” he laughs. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” says Ryan, and they shake hands.

“Geoff says you were a military man,” Burnie says. Ryan’s instantly warming to him - he seems to know exactly how to direct the conversation so that there’s zero awkwardness whatsoever. Charisma rolls off him in waves. “Sorry to hear about your injury - but welcome to the Club, anyway.”

“Thanks,” Ryan says, “and I, um, still _am_ in the military, actually.”

“Oh, you’re a specialist now?” Burnie spells.

Ryan feels his heart jump into his throat.

He hasn’t actually discussed with the others that there’s the possibility of his hearing being partially restored. He’s not sure how that would go down exactly, but he knows that some people would be opposed to it, and recalls that Michael was particularly scornful of how the older Deaf Club members opposed Hearing signers.

He doesn’t wanna piss off Burnie after just meeting the guy, so he swallows down the anxiety, and simply says: “I hope so.”

Jeremy’s disappeared. Ryan wasn’t concentrating on him, so he missed whatever conversation tore him away, and now he’s alone.

“Are you performing?” asks a shorter man, standing next to Burnie with a beer in hand. He signs despite this.

“This is G-U-S,” Burnie says, rolling his eyes. “He’s got zero patience, so you’ll have excuse his shitty manners with beginners.”

“Hey, I’m a goddamn delight,” Gus says indignantly.

“Ryan,” Ryan says, trying not to laugh, “and no, I’m not good enough for that.”

“Yet,” says Burnie.

Ryan immerses himself in this new circle for some time as more people filter in - a very sweet woman called Barbara chats with him about video games for a little while, makes a shockingly filthy joke at Gus, and then drifts over to Trevor, who is her boyfriend, Ryan’s just discovered.

At one point, he notices that across the way, Gavin’s got his arm slung over Dan’s shoulders. And then he notices a high five. And Gavin hanging off Dan’s arm. And a piggyback ride, of all things.

And Michael...

Michael does _not_ look happy. At any given moment during Gavin’s clinging.

He tries to focus on his new acquaintances and what they’re saying - it’s rude not to, after all, and to be honest, Michael and Gavin isn’t a battlefield he’s sure he wants to set foot onto.

“A-D-A-M?” he spells out clumsily.

The man nods to confirm, looking pleased. Adam’s a giant of a guy who might’ve been a lumberjack in four consecutive past lives. “You’ve been signing for how long? You’ve picked it up so quickly,” he says, impressed. “Very fluid.”

“I take classes, too,” Ryan says. He feels a little embarrassed, actually. “But it’s AASLG, mostly, they’re real patient with me. And Jeremy’s worked with hearing loss before.”

“He’s patient? Even though he’s from Boston?” Adam says. There’s a twinkle of mischief in his eyes that Ryan doesn’t like the look of.

“They sign fast there, I’ve heard.”

“Not as fast as--” Adam begins, and then tapers into some incredibly quick, sharp movements, with angles and points and extended index fingers everywhere. Ryan blinks. Is Adam fucking with him?

To his immense relief, Jeremy appears in the corner of his vision, takes in the sight of a Ryan Who Is Beginning To Panic, and smoothly glides into the conversation. "Come on, man," he laughs, "don't scare the new guy…"

"H-A-R-D  M-O-D-E," Ryan spells pathetically, and Adam booms with laughter so deeply that he can feel it buzzing along his forearms. Jeremy snorts and guides Ryan away by his elbow.

"Don't pay attention to Adam. He's from Philadelphia."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"French accent," Jeremy says, like it's obvious, and steers him towards the seating in front of the stage. Some of the Gamers have already congregated at their own gigantic table set-up. “We’re over here,” he continues, waving at the general area, “but if you wanna sit with anyone else, that’s cool too.”

“I’m good here,” Ryan nods. “...Are you going up tonight?”

“Yeah!” he says, bursting with enthusiasm, “I can’t wait, I’ve been working on it for _weeks_. I love these things, man, they’re so much fun.”

“I’ll be watching,” Ryan confirms.

Jeremy suddenly yet only _slightly_ curls in on himself, self-conscious. “Well, I, um,” he says, grinning and turning pink, “I’m glad you are, but - no offence - I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to keep up with it. It’s pretty fast.”

“I’m sure it’ll be nice to watch anyway,” Ryan smiles.

Looking slightly awestruck, and still as conscious about himself as he was before, Jeremy fixes him with a heavy look. He’s still smiling, which Ryan counts as a plus, because it’s making _him_ smile in return, and the moment is just starting to get fluttery and light when the lights go off.

And on. And off again, and back on again.

Jon’s standing at the front of the stage, arms aloft and hair as majestic as his name sign proclaims it to be.

“Ladies! Gentlemen! Other!” he signs widely. What a neat little package that introduction is - it just _looks_ nice. “Welcome to this month’s Deaf Club Performance Night! This evening, we’ll be starting with some non-musical signing, before continuing onto our musical acts. Please make sure you are all wearing the appropriate ear protection! Be confident, have fun, and mostly importantly--”

He points and winks at Ryan, who can feel himself laugh his way into becoming a tomato.

“--Impress the newbies. We want them to come back,” Jon says, biting his lip in appreciation.

Ryan takes a hasty seat.

The attention is nice, but he’d rather it came from... someone else. Someone specific, in fact.

First up is Patrick. He’s performing poetry, and Ryan makes a mental note to ask him properly about the author afterwards so he can look them up. It’s so water-like, with big sweeps and waves, using his entire arm span at some points. Hell, it looks like _dancing._ Meg waves him over to sit with her, and Dan and Gavin, too - he takes the seat with gratitude, because Jeremy’s disappeared. Presumably Lindsay is backstage ready to perform, too, or helping out. But honestly, Ryan thinks she could be anywhere and doing _anything_.

“Nothing again, Michael?”

“What would I do?” he shrugs at Meg, “I’ll gladly get up there when I find something I wanna show everyone. Haven’t found anything I love, yet, though.”

Ryan thinks that may only be true of a performance. It’s slightly inaccurate when applied to Michael’s wider life.

There’s a sudden, thunderous vibration under Ryan’s feet; the applause isn’t just visual, in the standard jazz-hands kind of motion he’s been taught, but the audience are thumping on the tables and bar in appreciation. That’s a frightening new one, holy shit.

Patrick exits the stage and claps hands with Jeremy as they switch over, and Ryan sits up a little straighter. He knows that if there’s fast spelling, he’ll be fucked, but he wants to see how many individual signs he can pick up.

When the music starts, Ryan can feel it in the speakers. Gavin’s stuck his fingers in their table’s closest one, but just putting his hands flat on the surface is enough to pick it up: one, two, three, four, a steady beat of what might be plucked strings of some kind. The sound has a solid feel to it like strings, at least. Quick bursts of tone.

Jeremy begins to sign over it. Ryan’s instantly transfixed.

Even though he struggles _far_ more than he thought he would, Ryan can still see some of the story unfold. A bicycle. A record being scratched - the motion is unmistakable. Deconstruction and reconstruction. _America. Friends. Telephone._

During the instrumental break, the vibrations build around the room. The whole room is anticipating something. It’s infectious. It’s exciting.

Jeremy’s actions get wider. More violent. More stressed. _It feels so good to be alive and on top_. Ryan can see him getting more victorious, more vicious, more _cruel_. Explosive motions. Slashing and stabbing, slick signs that glide through the air like a plague. It builds and builds, ending with repetition which Ryan can’t understand--

And then Jeremy reins it back in. Smaller actions. The repeated lines help him comprehend the phrase: _I can ride my bike with no handlebars_.

It stops. The lights come back up. Ryan hits the tables along with the rest of the club, and the glasses tremble in their places.

He might be a little head over heels with the way Jeremy channels feeling like that.

“That looked exhausting,” he grins, as the man claps hands with Lindsay to switch over and makes his way back down to the tables.

“Oh, it was. Did you like it?”

“I did,” Ryan says, “I really liked it. C’mon, I’ll get drinks.”

“Aw, you don’t have to do that--”

“I wanna,” he says gently, and Jeremy bites his lip to contain his smile.

“Okay,” he concedes. “Okay. But I’m getting the next ones.”

Lindsay’s song starts up as Ryan orders, and even though they’re not particularly close to any speakers at the moment, Ryan can feel a bassline thrumming delightfully in his ribcage. It’s steady, low, and romantic. Something old, maybe.

“Did you pick any of it up?” Jeremy asks teasingly.

“I did,” Ryan says, “I did pretty badly, but I got some of it. I think my favourite was _me and my friends understand the future_. It just… looks nice.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t poke my eye out.”

Ryan chokes into his Diet Coke, trying to suppress his laughter, and Jeremy takes an amused sip of his beer. It’s in the second between wiping his face and looking up at Lindsay’s signaoke that he suddenly works out which song it is.

“Hey,” he says, nudging Jeremy’s shoulder with his elbow. “This is Fever. Peggy Lee. I like this one.”

“She’s singing it to Meg,” Jeremy adds, and sure enough, Ryan follows his pointing finger over to the table they’d just left, where Meg had her face in her hands, and simultaneously looked very pleased and embarrassed. Lindsay’s doing all sorts of slow footwork and using the entirety of the stage, to the crowd’s glee. She looks like she’s in her element.

Ryan also notices Gavin drumming the staggered rhythm out on Dan’s forearm. Michael abruptly leaves for the restroom.

 _What a lovely way to burn,_ Lindsay says.

(Burnie raises his bottle at the sign. She gives him finger guns in return, blows a kiss at her girlfriend, and skips off stage.)

After Lindsay leaves, Jon comes on to announce an interlude, which they’re going to fill with music. The lights don’t come back up, but that’s okay - Ryan’s feeling alright at the moment.

“How’re you finding sign singing?” Jack asks him.

“Hard,” Ryan pouts, and that earns him a chuckle. “But I wanna get better. I’m _real_ crap at the fingerspelling.”

“Have you tried one of those online speed tests?” Jack says. “It spells it out with pictures and you can set the pace, they’re really good. Matt swears by ‘em, but I think he just likes setting the high scores.”

“I’ll give that a shot,” Ryan promises, “that way I can understand Jeremy’s next rap.”

It’s so worth saying that; Jeremy _radiates_ happiness.

Out of the corner of his eye, he feels like he briefly sees Michael in the club porch. When he properly focuses, though, there’s no-one there - of course, Gavin’s having a napkin fight with Dan right now, so it’s entirely possible that Michael saw this and decided he’d had enough of watching.

Whilst he’s deciding whether or not to investigate, and whether it’s really any of his business at all, the strobe lights and projections start flickering around the hall. The blue and yellow ones he can deal with.

The red lines of light are a little more reminiscent of being in the field, though.

“I think I’m gonna step out and get some air,” he says, feeling acid settle in his gut.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just need a break,” he says, smiling in what he hopes is a convincing way, and leaves his glass at the bar.

It’s a lot later than when he usually leaves the club - Gamers ends sooner than the Performance Nights, apparently. It’s well past eleven PM, and there are stars twinkling in the Austin skies. Ryan takes a seat in the dark, where the concrete meets the threadbare grass of the yard, and accompanies it with a deep breath.

The stillness of the gentle outdoors helps. A lot.

For the second time in as many weeks, he jumps out of his skin when the fire escape bursts open, the sudden streams of light scaring the fuck out of him, and again, it’s Jon who’s coming out back via that particular door. That’s not what’s interesting about it, though. What’s interesting is that firstly, he’s illuminated Michael, leaning his back against the brickwork whilst he throws rocks across the yard. And not only that, but _neither of them have noticed him_.

“Hey,” says Jon carefully.

He gets a limp wave of acknowledgement in reply.

Ryan debates whether or not he should make his presence known, or just quietly leave. But something’s keeping him there. Nosiness, probably, and a morbid desire to eavesdrop.

Guilt-ridden, but not very remorseful, he squints at their conversation.

“You okay?”

“No,” says Michael furiously. “Just me being my dumbass idiot self. Stupid Michael, as usual. Can’t do chemistry, can’t do songs, can’t speak BSL.”

“Woah, woah,” says Jon, “this sounds a little more involved than just ‘stupid’. You’re not stupid, who told you that?”

“Gavin.”

Jon tilts his head dubiously. His hair bounces. “Gavin said that. Those exact words.”

“Not verbally,” Michael says. He throws another rock. “More physically. With Dan. But they’ve got their own fuckin’ language, what did I expect? They work together for weeks and weeks and they don’t need me. Stupid. _Idiot_.”

“Hey, no, come on,” says Jon, “does Gavin even know how you feel about him? He’s known Dan since school, they’re gonna be a little handsy with each other. I don’t think it’s like _that_.”

“What if it is, though?” Michael says miserably, hurling a whole handful of stones across the yard, “I’m just moron loudmouth Michael and everyone else is all paired off. That’s how it’s gonna be forever.”

“You’re overreacting,” Jon says. It’s a neat sign - just ‘react’, but bigger.

Then Michael really _does_ react in a bigger way, and stumbles forwards to crash his and Jon’s mouths together. His glasses press into the bridge of his nose. He looks conflicted even as he’s committing to the action - face screwed up like he’s in pain, hands unsure where to settle and feet even more unstable. Jon’s not frozen, per se, but he is noticeably still.

Eventually, Jon’s hands reach up and smooth Michael’s arms down against his sides, and they break the kiss. Neither of them are thrilled with what just happened.

“You don’t want this,” Jon signs gently.

“No, I don’t, I’m sorry, man. I don’t know why I did that,” Michael says. He looks a little bit ill. “I shouldn’t have done that to you, I’m really sorry.”

Jon smiles, and trickles fingers down the side of his face, moving smoothly into a ‘nothing sign. _Don’t sweat it._

And then he bundles Michael into the tightest hug Ryan’s ever seen.

Maybe it’s time to leave.

Returning to the hall should be a shock to the system, but his senses are already on overdrive from processing the scene that had just unfolded.

“You okay?” Jeremy asks, as he returns to the bar.

“Yeah,” Ryan says, “I came to say goodbye, I think I’m gonna head home. It’s getting pretty late.”

“Aw,” says Jeremy, his lips briefly turning downwards. He recovers quickly: “I’ll owe you that drink back, then?”

Ryan considers winking, but decides against any potential disaster, in the likely event that he were to flub it. “I’d like that,” he says instead, and waves at Burnie as he goes.

He’s just about to reach the porch, when:

“Ryan! Are you leaving?”

He’s turned to see Gavin, after some insistent tapping at his elbow. “Yeah,” he says, “I’m pretty tired. Gotta get more rest than I used to.”

“Erm,” says Gavin, and flaps his hands uselessly.

Ryan squints. “You good?”

“I was wondering if you’d give me a lift back,” Gavin says, with so much speed that he tangles himself in his own fingers in places. “Dan’s staying with Burnie to talk production this week, and I just… Please. If it’s not too much of a pain.”

It’s only when Gavin signs ‘pain’ that he lets his facial expression slip somewhat. Ryan catches his bottom lip wobbling, and signs smaller, like he’s murmuring. “Gavin,” he says, using his name sign to get his attention, “are you alright?”

“Yeah,” says Gavin, bouncing on his heels. “Yeah, just… Just a bit--” sign, “--a bit bloody sad and upset, Ryan. A bit blinkin’--” sign.

“I don’t know what those mean,” Ryan says kindly, and walks him out to his car.

The first sign is a fantastically wobbly Gavin sign that means ‘miffed’. The second is a lot more visceral - literally ‘gutted’.

“You wanna talk about it?” he asks, stabilising the wheel with his knees whilst he’s talking.

The streetlights are sweeping over Gavin’s crushed expression like a rather depressing barcode scanner. “Ryan,” he says, “do you think Michael likes me?”

“You’re best friends, I thought,” Ryan says cautiously, “that should mean he likes you, right?”

“No, I mean… Never mind.”

He turns his head slightly to see that Gavin’s leaning his forehead against the glass of the window, playing with the cord of his shorts.

“Have you told him?” Ryan suggests. “That might be a good start.”

“Are you mental? Of course I haven’t, I don’t want to spoil anything we’ve got already,” Gavin says, looking more than a little distraught.

“You never know.”

“‘Course I do. I know. He can’t stand me. We don’t even hug--”

“Is this what this is about?” says Ryan, relief and annoyance washing over him. “Hugging? Jesus Christ. Have a goddamn conversation with him, Gavin.”

He swerves slightly, trying to regain control of his steering after the outburst.

“I’m just saying, maybe he likes someone else more than me. Instead of me.”

Ryan pulls over.

“Look,” he says, over the flashing of his blinkers, “you two have got to sit down with each other and lay all your cards on the table. If you wanna ask him about someone, just ask him. Stop dancing around each other and be _honest_.”

Gavin looks him in the eye, uncertain, as though he wants to say: _you’re right_.

What Gavin says instead, however, is more along the lines of: “I didn’t know you knew the sign for ‘cards’, Ryan.”

“Shut up,” he laughs, and pulls out into the road again.

“No, Jeremy’s right, you are improving fast.”

“Jeremy said that about me?”

“Oh, come on,” Gavin guffaws, “you can’t give me Michael-advice if you can’t take it yourself. For Jeremy-advice. Y’know?”

Ryan gives him the side-eye. “I hate the way you talk sometimes,” he says slowly, “you’re like, the shadow version of that dude I met tonight. Adam.”

Gavin’s face is the picture of outrage.

They’re at his place now, so Ryan pulls into the drive. He keeps the ignition running so that he has some light to sign by. “Just... have a talk with him, yeah?” he says. “It’s none of my business, but also it’s pretty bad watching you two being weird with each other, and over stuff that’s not even _true_.”

“Yeah,” Gavin nods meekly, “I probably shouldn’t have - _sign_ \- tonight, should I?”

Ryan fixes him with a blank look. “Depends what that means.”

S-C-A-R-P-E-R.

The sign is a Gavin word, and it means ‘scarper’.

Which is exactly what Gavin does next - he slams the passenger door with a big _whoosh_ of air, and raises a hand in thanks before he scuttles through his front door.


	9. Chapter 9

“In _how_ long?” Ryan asks in disbelief. He’s convinced he’s heard wrong, which is, of course, nonsense - he can’t hear at all. But his incredulity in the face of written language isn’t fettered by that small detail.

His audiologist underlines it.

 **_A slot just opened up in_ ** **_two weeks_ ** **_with the surgeon._ **

 

* * *

 

They play Deaf Minecraft at Gamers, this week, and Ryan can barely concentrate on the captions. There’s too much on his mind. The final straw is when a skeleton pincushions him from behind because he’s distracted, staring at the leftover Performance Night glitter caught in the linoleum, and Jeremy huffs.

“Ryan!” he says, mock-concerned, “what’s gotten into you? I can’t keep giving you diamond swords, man, I just can’t--”

Ryan loves how Jeremy signs’ ‘diamond’. Like the glint of a rock which is set in a ring. It looks kinda like the Gavin-word ‘knob’, but it wiggles outwards instead of jabs towards the floor.

He sets down his controller.

“I’m getting surgery.”

The flurry of hand movement is so sudden and unexpected that Ryan actually screws his eyes shut for a second, so that he doesn’t have to see any of their reactions. It’s only when Matt taps him insistently on the arm that he dares to look, and it ends up being:

“Awesome!” Trevor says enthusiastically--

“Yeah,” says Matt, “you need it for work, right? This is great news!”

Everyone seems to be… _celebrating_. Michael and Lindsay have headed to the bar, Geoff’s nodding contentedly whilst his character dies on his screen, and Gavin’s eyes are as big as dinner plates.

A warm weight settles on the edge of his knee. When he glances down, he sees it’s Jeremy’s hand, resting there like a gentle grounding force.

He takes it away to sign: “You want this?” he asks.

Ryan nods. There’s still little fragments of fear rattling around in his chest.

With a big nod, Jeremy looks satisfied. “Then what’s the problem?” he asks, “if you _want_ it, and you _need_ it, then get the implant.”

“But,” Ryan starts. He looks up to see that someone’s had the sense to pause their game. “If I get my hearing back… It’s not the same as being Hearing the whole time, is it? I didn’t want you to...”

He uses the plural form of ‘you’. But in his brain, the ‘you’ is one, singular Jeremy.

_I didn’t want you to say I wasn’t allowed back._

Michael and Lindsay return, and Geoff stands up to help them with drinks, setting down a pint of Coke by Ryan’s feet. “If anyone tries to stop you from coming,” he says, all too easily, “then I’ll fist fight them myself.”

“Even if it’s Adam?” says Ryan.

“ _Especially_ if it’s Adam,” Geoff says. “There’s only room for one ginger asshole in my life, and someone’s got the spot already. Now drink your Coke and find me some fucking Redstone.”

They spend the next hour bustling about their build, trying to make some progress, before Ryan switches out with Jack, and Jeremy switches out with Steffie. It’s a saving grace, really, because it means that Ryan can hobble over to the bar and sit without anything overwhelming him. No Geoff and Jack. No football. And no crutches, either, which he appreciates with every step.

After a minute or two of staring at his hands, Jeremy slides onto the stool next to him.

“I’m sorry,” Ryan says immediately, “I’m just… A little…. Uh.”

“Unprepared?” Jeremy suggests. It’s a sign which splits the space in front of him into sections, but with a ‘no’ expression.

“That’s the one.”

‘Surgery’ is such an _ugly_ ASL word. It splits the opposite hand, held vertically, with a sharp thumb, slicing downwards. There’s no comfort in it. It’s all so clinical, and neat.

“It was a surprise,” he says, “obviously the squad has its own healthcare, and they just brought in our military audiologist, and… I don’t know.”

“Is there any way to rearrange it?”

Ryan shakes his head. “They’re bringing the surgeon in specially for me. I think it’s gonna be now or much, _much_ later if I reschedule.”

“Is the care good?”

He considers this. Jeremy’s looking at him earnestly, like he’s really interested in Ryan’s future prospects in the hearing world - and then Ry’s mind goes, ‘ _wait, what the fuck, of_ course _he’s interested, he’s your friend and your Deaf Club mentor and_ ’...

“It’s the best,” he replies. It’s honest.

“Are you gonna be able to stream music into your brain?”

“What?!”

“Gavin told me about it, he said it was a thing,” Jeremy says, “there’s plug-in adaptors and wires and stuff, and you put them in your implant receiver and the music goes right in there.”

Ryan’s eyebrows are in his hairline. “That’s _so_ cool.”

“He said that if you heard before then it sounds all wonky,” he grins, spelling out the Gavinism, “like, the pitch is weird and the tones are out of sync, because your brain got relaxed without noise and needs to get used to it again.”

“I’ll have to make a video with him and Dan about it,” Ryan says.

It was a throwaway line - a little joke, just a reference to his friends’ jobs, really - but when he heads out into the lot, he spots a shadow darting across the gravel. When he turns, Gavin’s jogging to keep up with him.

“Sorry,” Gavin says, “I didn’t wanna put you on the spot when everyone was there.”

“That’s okay,” Ryan says, and can’t help but be suspicious. “What’s up, Gav?”

“What,” Gavin starts, and shakes his head - he started with the question word instead of ending with it, like he usually would, but at least Ryan knows an interrogation is about to occur.  “What’s sound _like_?”

Ryan takes a second to mull it over, considering who he’s talking to. Gavin’s fascinated by sound, he knows this. His and Dan’s channel is filled with paint on speakers and sensory images, lego and sand and powders and colour and all kinds of textures which simulate sound - _here’s how we feel the music, so watch and learn_. Gavin’s never been anything less than fiercely proud of his Deafness, but Ryan can tell that the urge to know is too much sometimes. A hungry curiosity that eats him alive.

“Well,” he says, trying not to sugarcoat it, “there are a lot of sounds which are _real_ fuckin’ annoying. When we talk about hearing, it’s always the big things, like voices and music and stuff. No-one talks about the little things, like C-O-N-S-T-R-U-C-T-I-O-N work. Birds in the early morning. The sound of water when you really gotta piss is a _killer_.”

Gavin snorts. But he’s still listening with sharp interest.

So Ryan tries to put himself in Gavin’s shoes. “You’d probably like the sound of a turn signal. And Freddie Mercury. And rain on a roof when you’re going to sleep.”

He abruptly has to steel himself. There’s so many noises Gavin’s never heard. Shitty musical car horns. Cats, meowing. Commercial jingles and the swish of waterproof fabric and your friends trying to stifle their laughter and the satisfying click of the buttons on a video game controller.

“Do you miss it?” Gavin asks. It’s not the first time, and he’ll ask it again.

“I can live without it,” Ryan replies, “but it’s weird that it’s gone. It’s like living in a glass box that boxless-folk are _real_ assholes about.”

Gavin nods. “You got that right. Sorry for the questions, Ryan, I’m just interested-- I wanna know what sound is, like, to other people. Y’know?”

(Ryan kinda does know, so he bows his head and smiles. He feels like he’s reminiscing on an old friend, to a new one.)

“Sound is the world reminding you that it’s there,” he offers.

Gavin's thoughtful. He seems satisfied, and thanks Ryan for the conversation, and Ryan can’t stop thinking about it for the whole of his drive back home.


	10. Chapter 10

Ryan is trying to buy floor polish.

For most people, this would be an easy enough task. He’s now able to drive to the store, walk the aisles until he finds the perfect bottle, and take it to the checkout. He’s scuffed his kitchen and hallway to hell with his crutches over the last couple of months, and he just wants to scrub the rubber smudges out… At least, for as long as his bad leg will allow him to.

Except the store is out of stock. And now he has to ask an assistant.

“Excuse me,” he says. His throat is scratchy from lack of use, and he’s just had to stop himself from tapping on the man’s arm like he would at the Deaf Club, so he’s hoping to make this quick.

The assistant diverts his attention from the shelves. “How can I help?”

“I’m looking for floor polish,” he says, “you’re out of stock, it’s just for wood floors. Do you have anything similar, or anything out back?”

“Sure,” says the assistant, and _turns away_ to point at the other end of the store. Ryan can’t see his mouth properly. The kid’s waving his arm across the aisle, delivers his explanation, and faces him again.

“I,” Ryan starts, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that, could you repeat it please?”

And the assistant does, looking everywhere but Ryan and tilting his mouth towards the floor and the shelves.

“I’m really sorry,” Ryan says when he’s finished. He feels like he might cry. He’s trying his hardest not to default to ASL. “I didn’t-- I can’t h--”

A hand comes to rest firmly on his right shoulder blade. Ryan jumps.

“Hey,” he sees Jeremy say, vocally, and then he loses the rest in the conversation the man holds with the assistant. Their mouths are going quickly, and it’s hard to predict whose turn at speaking it is, but with a few gestures and bewildered glances on Ryan’s part, Jeremy thanks the worker and continues down the aisle.

Ryan stares.

“You coming?” Jeremy signs, and it jolts him back into action. They amble down to the end of the row and take a sharp right, towards the other end of the store.

“Thanks,” Ryan says. He’s feeling pretty embarrassed.

“No problem,” Jeremy signs, as best as he can when his basket is hooked around his elbow, “it’s just on the other side, they got more in Home Care instead of Hardware.”

Ryan’s slightly in love.

“What’s the sign for R-E-S-C-U-E?”

Jeremy laughs, stopping without warning to put his basket on the floor; his hands start open, crossed over his chest, before clenching and moving outwards. It looks like a dance move, or maybe it looks like some kind of superhero salute.

“That’s pretty.”

“It’s very satisfying to sign, yeah,” Jeremy grins, and picks up his basket.

Ryan follows him. He meant ‘pretty’.

They duck into another aisle filled with bleaches and wipes, brightly coloured plastics with warnings on, and sweet-smelling detergents. “Here you go,” Jeremy signs, “is this what you were after?”

“Yeah,” says Ryan, a little awed, “thanks so much, Jeremy. I was starting to panic.”

“No prob,” he says, “don’t hurt yourself cleaning up. If you miss Club this week then Gavin’s gonna screw, he’s already being a sad sack of shit from Dan going home.”

“He’s okay, though?”

“Nothing some Halo can’t fix,” Jeremy says, and nudges him in the side jovially.

Ryan huffs with laughter. He’s a lot better than he was two goddamn minutes ago, that’s for sure.

“I’ll see you around?”

“Sure thing,” Jeremy says, and then reconsiders. He sets his basket on the floor, seemingly without realising he’s let it drop. “Unless...”

“Unless?”

It’s a cute sign, tapping the temple twice with the pinky finger, and then flicking a thumbs up off the chin.

“Well,” Jeremy says, “I don’t have anything refrigerated, or… Well, we could hang out? Maybe? I don’t know, it’s just an idea.”

“That sounds great,” Ryan says. He ignores the fluttering in his chest in favour of finally grabbing a bottle of floor polish. “Is it okay if I follow you around the store? I only have to get this.”

“Sure, pal, I’m only getting bread and cat food,” Jeremy beams. “I can throw them in the car and then maybe we can take a walk down into town?”

It’s a very good idea.

“I forgot you had cats,” Ryan tells him, as they walk empty-handed down the block, “I only saw it on Facebook, I think.”

“Yeah, they’re the best cats ever,” gushes Jeremy, “I love them so much. They get so lonely when I have to go away for work, it really breaks my heart - but when I get back, they’re only mad for so long before they want cuddles again. So it’s not too bad.”

“Are you going away again soon?”

“I hope not,” he grins.

There’s something sad behind it.

A playground sits over the way, set into a little square of closed-off grass, and Ryan’s torn from Jeremy’s conflicted smile to looser footsteps and visions he can’t take his eyes from.

“What?” says Jeremy, in the corner of his eyes, “what it is?”

“Not that I’m not having a really interesting chapter of my life right now,” Ryan says, “but sometimes I look at things, and I know there’s sound there I’m missing.”

“And you miss it,” Jeremy finishes.

“...Yeah.”

“Am I missing something?” he says, except he doesn’t say it - Ryan picks up the sign for ‘puzzle’ and a fumble for thin air, and draws his own conclusions from that.

“I, uh,” he begins. “I’ve been doing tests. In preparation for surgery.”

“Of course.”

“And I’m not doing so well. At all.”

“Right.”

“So I’m thinking… If I _never_ do well, even after the cochlear implants,” Ryan says, “then it won’t be all bad. But I’d never get to hear things like kids in a playground, or cat noises, or you asking a store attendant for floor polish because I’m having a major moron moment.”

Jeremy laughs, his eyes crinkling up, and Ryan aches.

“Jesus, you don’t need _my_ voice, it’s terrible!” Jeremy says. “But I get you. It’ll be hard, but you’re a pro. And you’ve always got us - actually, gaming is way better that way, Gavin makes some pretty interesting sounds when he gets rightfully murdered.”

 _Bzz-bzz_.

“Speaking of...”

It’s not easy to sign with his cell phone in his hand, but Jeremy seems to get the gist.

It’s a Whatsapp message. From Gavin. They’ve never messaged each other directly before, so it’s the first retrievable piece of history between the two of them. Huh. Why wouldn’t he just use the Gamers’ group chat?

 

**_Things are better with Michael now. Also I’m getting surgery_ **

 

“What?” Ryan says quietly, _out loud,_ because what the _fuck_ , Gavin.

There’s a weight against his arm as Jeremy leans over to peek. Ryan taps out a quick reply:

 

**Finally having your ‘I eat shit at Siege’ spleen removed?**

**_I’m serious, Ryan_ **

**Fucking hell** **  
** **You okay?**

**_Never better!!_ **

 

“He’s really doing it,” Ryan signs. His hands are shaky.

Jeremy frowns.

“Doing _what_?”

 

* * *

 

 

“Guys. I’m getting it done.”

“Seriously?!” Geoff signs, throwing down his controller, “Ryan just did that announcement last week, don’t you think we’d remember the joke?”

Ryan feels as pale as Gavin looks. “No, Geoff, it’s for real,” he says. “I’m really… Yeah.”

A blanket of silence drops over the group around the TV.

Perhaps, Ryan thinks, it’s because they were prepared for the outcome of surgery in Ryan’s case. He’s absolutely bricking it, because it’s only in four more days and then he can’t wash his fucking hair for like, two months, but everyone at Austin ASL Gamers knew he was hoping to return to his job and regain some degree of his lost hearing.

Gavin’s announcement is out of the blue. It’s also poorly timed because of Ryan’s schedule.

“What’s gonna happen?” Steffie asks.

He almost looks like he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. Which is fair enough, really, because it’s an intensely private and personal decision, but it also happens to affect the people surrounding him. Gavin’s part of the Deaf Club. He’s been a member since he moved down here, with Michael and Jeremy, and he doesn’t have any memories with a soundtrack.

“Are you gonna be a--” Geoff signs, and there’s some flinching. Ryan blanches, surprised by the reaction.

Jack hits him _hard_ in the arm: “Dude! That’s not cool.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, we don’t use that word,” Lindsay says flatly, “c’mon, man.”

 

(Ryan leans into Jeremy. “What’s the word?” he signs, alarmed and urgent.

“It’s like… ‘hearing’, and ‘listener’,” Jeremy signs back, “you put them together, and… Well, it’s what older Deaf people would call someone who has corrective surgery. CIs used to feel like...”

He trails off, but Ryan knows that sign. ‘Murder’.

“You’re not gonna find that word in an online tutorial, anyways.”)

 

“It’s super private, yeah,” Michael’s telling them all, “he had it double-checked by _everyone_ , so it’s a pretty confident decision.”

“This is awesome.”

“Yeah, I think this’ll be great for you--”

“What’s it gonna mean for your Youtube channel? Oh my _god,_ does Dan know yet? Did he know all along?”

Now that Gavin’s smiling and answering people, Ryan tunes back out of the conversation and wanders over to the bar. Jack and Geoff appear to be having a slightly-heated conversation behind the spirits rack. He decides to ignore them, in favour of Matt, who’s taken up a bar stool and a fresh bottle of something, and hasn’t made any move back to the group.

He tap-taps on Matt’s forearm.

Matt jumps. His hair whips around in a halo for a split second: “jeez, sorry,” he splutters, setting his bottle down, “I was out of it.”

“What’s on your mind?” Ryan asks, and takes a seat.

“Just… now there’s two of you,” Matt signs uselessly. “Not to mention Hearing people and CODAs, and… I don’t know, you all go by the rules of sign only, and all of you are really respectful, so--”

“Are you worried no-one wants to be Deaf?” asks Ryan incredulously.

“No,” Matt says, “I’m worried that people would rather have me be Hearing.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ryan says straight away.

“Good, ‘cos I’m not doing it. I won’t, not ever,” Matt says adamantly.

There’s a pause as both of them turn to eye Jack and Geoff. Neither of them are looking - in fact, Geoff’s loose on his toes, in the way he gets when he’s feeling guilty, so Ryan turns back before he catches conversation he shouldn’t.

“Gavin's been deaf since he was two,” says Matt. “That's as long as he can remember for... I've been deaf since I was _nineteen_. My entire life changed. And it was hard! But I adapted to it, and I got to be a part of all of this. All of these people's lives. I found a passion for modding in a way I never would've thought about otherwise. I don't _want_ to go back to how it was before. It's not time travel or a magic fix-it. It doesn’t make your ears magically perfect. It wouldn't be the same, and I don't _want_ it to be the same.”

Matt brings the bottle to his lips and drains half of it at once.

It’s nice, Ryan thinks, that he can offer something so simple as a hand on the shoulder in agreement, and have it count as a response. Words were less of an effective option every day, now. Matt doesn’t meet his eyes, but he sets down his drink, stares at the bar for a few moments, and eventually signs ‘ _thank you_ ’.

He orders a Diet Coke from Jack, and sits back in his stool when Matt slinks away.

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Jack huffs. “Will be, anyway.”

Jeez. Ryan doesn’t ask anymore questions.

_Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-- “Ryan!”_

“Shit-what?” he signs, a garbled mess against the drumming down his shoulders. Michael laughs at his reaction and steadies his glass.

“Damn, don’t get scared, it’s just me. I need to ask you a favour.”

He studies Michael’s expression - lit up like the fourth of July, he is, freckles and anticipation humming in an aura that surrounds his whole presence.

“Are you free three weeks on Saturday?”

“Should be,” Ryan thinks. Saturdays are always his free days. “Why?”

“Still good to drive?” Michael presses.

“Course.”

“Okay,” he grins, “I’ve got an awesome idea and I need your help with it. I’ll text you details if it’s gonna happen - oh, man, I really hope it does. Don’t tell Gavin, okay?”

And Michael leaves as abruptly as he’d scared the bejeesus outta him.

Yeesh. Ryan wonders what Gavin did to have them make up, or maybe even if Michael approached him first. Whatever had gone down, it seems to have patched them up like a charm.

**Author's Note:**

> My writing blog can be found [here](http://futureboy-ao3.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Kudoses, comments, and subscriptions are appreciated! ♥


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